How to deal with hard surfaces

ebastuart

Hey dear quixel'er,
does anybody have a good suggestion how to deal with hard surfaces with sharp edges?
Assume I have a simple shape like a cylinder with 5 coners (see attachment) and I want to generate some kind of dulled metal texture with dDo. As you may imagine that such object has no useful normal maps. Sharp edges plain faces :poly142:
I wonder how I can select the edges in dDo to affect them. I want that all edges which are in the 3d-model should be altered.

kind regards
stuart

divi

color the convex edges white and the concave edges black and the rest 50% grey and use that as a curvature map in ddo. for max there are scripts that can help with that - no idea about modo though.

ebastuart

Thank you. I will try it.

ghaztehschmexeh

ebastuart wrote: »

As you may imagine that such object has no useful normal maps. Sharp edges plain faces

Nothing has total 90 degree corner. Everything has some kind of bevel. So you are incorrect in this assumption.

ebastuart

@ghaztehschmexeh
you are speaking about the real world, I do about a low poly model

SpaceJunkee

ebastuart wrote: »

@ghaztehschmexeh
you are speaking about the real world, I do about a low poly model

I believe ghaztehschmexeh was trying to hint to you to make a high poly version with some tight bevels on all edges and bake a normal from that.

ebastuart

I have already tried to bake some normalmaps from a high poly model but I was not satisfied with the resurt.

ghaztehschmexeh

ebastuart wrote: »

I have already tried to bake some normalmaps from a high poly model but I was not satisfied with the resurt.

Then I believe you should go and work on that before getting mixed up in the quixel suite. Baking normal maps is pretty important, and important for getting good results from the suite.

SpaceJunkee

For an object like this I think it would be ok to bevel the low poly mesh once and then dupliacte and take that and add some loops and throw on a turbosmooth mod then try baking that. I agree that it's not easy to get good results with very hard edged low poly geometry.