[Workflow Quixel and xNormal] Boss Character 45K Polys and 8K Maps.

Feingeist

Hey Guys,

i am working on a game right now with a super huge boss in the middle of an arena. Because of the size we decided to make him kind of high poly with a huge texture map (8k)

The high poly is like 4,5 MIO polys heavy and built out of lots of subtools in zbrush.. the merged, decimated and zReMeshed version is 45k polys heavy.

I already UVed it in Headus (was a pain in the ass because it was very laggy) and baked a normal map in xnormal.

Attached some images of the 45k boss Low poly in maya with the normal map applied:



More Pictures -> http://dropmocks.com/mHjKm7


I also baked an color ID map from vertex colors of the different subtools for masking in quixel.

Since we want to use one 8k map for the whole boss - quixel workflow is very slow.

Do you guys think its possible to texture everything in 1k.. save materials and project and everything as preset and when Im satisfied I just rebuilt the project in quixel with 8K maps? How would I do that?

The next thing that is strange:

when I want to bake 8k normal maps in xnormal using Cuda it always freezes and crashes although we use a very potent workstation. Rendering lower rez with cuda is no problem.

When I want to bake the ao map using the CPU it always just gives me a strange grey map that looks more like a color ID map in greytones Anybody has tips here?

For my next asset that is going to be that big I want to alter my workflow. How can I work to not have to UV layout a 45k mesh...

Retopo and uv the base dynamesh sculpt imediatly and let the uvs scale with the subdivisions? I have no clue

Thanks for your help in adavance!

Cheers
Feingeist :thumbup:

final_fight

Try using UV master in Zbrush with "Use existing seams" option on. It will be much faster. Of course you'll need to create those seams in some other 3d app. Not sure about 8k workflow in Quixel, but would like to know about that too.

rls76

Yeah, 8k workflow in DDO is not fun. first off you'll be running about 23GB of ram, it will take about 15 minutes to save your work files and it will take about 10 - 20 minutes to compute when you make changes. If you can even manage to get DDO to actually run without any errors or crashing before you add any maps.

Gheromo

Why bother working at the full res when dealing with such big resolutions? Work at 25% of the resolution and once ur done rerender the maps at full res!

rls76

Becuase of DDO not wanting to export out the full res images, still wants to output 8k maps at 50% res. I have had it do either 8k at 50% res or 4k but not full res 8k's. The work around is to not set your work res to anything other then 100% (that on map first export) changing it to 50 then going back into the re-importer and resetting it back to 100 doent work, this still wont gauruntee that it will still export out full res 8k's in the end.

teddybergsman

Thanks Feingeist for the question!

Unless you have a super powerful machine it's not that important to work in 8K/16K, since you can upscale the project to any resolution via the reimporter at any time.

The key thing performance really boils down to at super high resolutions is RAM. As soon as memory runs out PS starts writing to a paging file (using the "scratch disks"). When this happens PS will become unbearably slow, and not a whole lot of fun. Having an SSD scratch disk really helps, but performance will still suffer.

rls76: Just to confirm, are you using the Reimporter to rerender the project at full resolution? The regular Exporter will simply export the project at the current resolution, so it is not to be confused with the Reimporter.

Thanks guys!
- Teddy

rls76

When using the exporter on 8k's and setting the res to 100% it was down ressing the outputs to 50% regardless of exporter settings (I was getting both 4k outputs as well as 8k's with 50% res) preview res was set to 100% if that makes any difference (this started in 1.6). What I noticed that if you imported your maps and set the work res to 50% it was for some reason not able to be set to 100% once the project file was written the first time around. Sometime using the reimporter set to 100% work res it would then on occasion export the 8k's out at full res. The 4k's I worked on I had no issues with export at full res.

Just to add to what Teddy said on a side note PS is a known memory hog and has a tendency to use more ram then it needs when writing out paging files specially with large files such as .psb files or any large sized files for that matter. Even running 32 GB it is painfully slow.

rls76

Just tried with a low poly tire with 8k maps that where all generated from xnormal nothing fancy, everything looks fine on screen, but now the exporter won't do anything when I hit the button. There is also something going on with the maps going blank on screen(solid grey), or being over-ridden by something, I only had one material in the layer, added the same material again and all the maps came back again very weird. Tried psd/tiff/png outputs at 16bit but nothing just empty clicking on the export button. But save all maps works.

Feingeist

teddybergsman wrote: »

rls76: Just to confirm, are you using the Reimporter to rerender the project at full resolution? The regular Exporter will simply export the project at the current resolution, so it is not to be confused with the Reimporter.

Thanks guys!
- Teddy

Thanks for your fast answer teddy, but I get an error everytime I want to start the reimporter (See Screenshot!)

I am running the newest version of creative cloud photoshop

rls76

That error looks familiar

scratchliquid

I think your game mesh is far too high resolution. Are you saying your model is 45k polygons, so that would be 90k tris? I personlay would make a good game mesh around 20k tris and bake all the information from the Highpoly to to the game mesh. I would bake 4k maps for my masters and then finaly crunch them down to 2k maps. Dont bother with Xnormal at that high res maps you will allways have memory or some kind of issues. If your using Maya then bake with Turtle, its fast and clean. Good luck.