Modo - PipelineIO + Vertex Normal Toolkit?

Tzur_H

I want to start and use PipelineIO to export my meshes for bake in xNormal to speed workflow a bit. Usually (in Maya) I just set my soft/hard edges by angle and then adjust some edges manually if needed. Since Ariel's script doesn't have that functionality I was wondering if it would be possible to use the vertex normal kit made by James? Will the export script of PipelineIO recognize the soft/hard edges set by the toolkit?

If there's a faster way of doing this please let me know, I'm very new to Modo

Another thing, how the hell can I export an OBJ/FBX with only selected polys? Whenever I try to "Export As.." it exports the whole damn scene :poly142:

Thanks for the help!

Bek

If it doesn't support the info from vertex normal toolkit (at a guess it would) you'd just have to use pipelineIO's manual hard/soft edge tag to do so. In fact if the Vertex Normal Toolkit saves that info in the same way as pipelineIO does it could be as simple as renaming a vertex map. Otherwise just use select > sharp or select Toolkits edges and tag them.

Really though if you're exporting a low poly that's going to be using a baked TS normal map you should be setting hard edges by UV seams (a feature pipelineIO has). Unless you also split UV's by 45 degree angles or something like that.

You can't export selected polys natively (afaik) but you can on 701 or higher export the selected mesh item only (right click on the mesh item, export selected layers)

edit: I just checked and it looks like it's already set up that way — PipelineIO and the Vertex Normal Toolkit both store the hard edges in a vertex map named HardEdges. So as long as your pipelineIO is set up to read that tag (check the pipelineIO PDF and/or link in my sig for examples) and export either vertex normals, smooting groups or split edges (whatever your target engine reads) you'll be good. Pretty cool that the VNT uses the same vertex map name, I wonder if that's deliberate or a happy coincidence.

Oh and since you said you're new to modo, the vertexmap is found under the bottom right UI — Lists tab, Other maps. If you view the statistics panel under that, you can expand the edges tree and then expand by selection set. Left of the selection sets name (HardEdges) is a + and - symbol. Pressing + will add those edges to your selection set. The statistics panel is useful for all sorts of things like that; another favourite is polygons > by vertex, which lets you select all polygons with >4 verts (ngons).

Farfarer

His is modified to match mine, I think it's intentional.

I'm not sure why it would redefine the normals set by my kit, though. I would assume it will export using the normals stored in the Vertex Normal Map (that my kit generates) if there is one.

Tzur_H

That's awesome! Makes my life easier :P

Bek, thanks for the in depth post, you were correct by assuming I had no idea how to locate the vertex map Also now I know how to export single layers which is good enough since you can just cut and paste polys into new layers incredibly fast in Modo, I like!
And the Google doc is incredibly helpful -> instant bookmarked!

Thanks James for writing these awesome scripts! :]

Tzur_H

Hey again.. god, learning Modo from Maya isn't easy for me :P

I'm trying to bake an OS normal map, but can't find the right output.
All I can find is a 'Normal' output which is a tangent space one..where is the OS output?! Arrrgghhhhh

Bek

You use Shading Normal as the output and use the Render menu > Bake From Object to Render Outputs. That's with your low + UV channel selected and the highpoly items as visible background (not selected/active) layers.

Dataday

Tzur_H wrote: »

Hey again.. god, learning Modo from Maya isn't easy for me :P

I'm trying to bake an OS normal map, but can't find the right output.
All I can find is a 'Normal' output which is a tangent space one..where is the OS output?! Arrrgghhhhh

This is currently one of the area's modo really suffers in. The process is convoluted at times.

So apparently, to get an OS normal map you have to "bake from render outputs" & after adding a "shaded normal" output, not from a normal layer, which is TS. So output is supposed to be OS, with a regular layer normal being TS. Someone with more experience in this inside of modo might want to clairify if I'm wrong.

I just went straight to Xnormal or Substance Designer, but do remember OS baking at one point for 701.

Tzur_H

I went ahead and tried it out, the bakes that I'm getting just seems wrong...?

This is what I'm getting:


Here is the setup I've used for the bake:


Also, when baking in Modo, it doesn't take into account the morph maps?
I'm trying to explode the mesh to get cleaner results (and also to test PipelineIO exports) but Modo doesn't seem to be using it? If there is a way to tell Modo to use the morph maps for baking, is there a way to stack morph maps? If I want to explode the meshes, and use another morph map for the low poly as a cage, is that possible?

I'd like to work in Modo for the majority of the pipeline, without the need of 3rd party programs, hopefully it's possible!

Thanks for the help guys, appreciate it!

Farfarer

In the properties of the render output for shading normal, tick the box for Remap Pixel Values, that'll remap the normals to 0-1 which is the result you'll want.

To render a morph, you'll need to add a Morph Deformer to the meshes, and set it's strength to 100%.

You can use another morph as the cage, when it asks you at bake time. That should stack on top of the Morph Deformer like you're after.

Tzur_H

Farfarer wrote: »

In the properties of the render output for shading normal, tick the box for Remap Pixel Values, that'll remap the normals to 0-1 which is the result you'll want.

To render a morph, you'll need to add a Morph Deformer to the meshes, and set it's strength to 100%.

You can use another morph as the cage, when it asks you at bake time. That should stack on top of the Morph Deformer like you're after.

Working perfectly :thumbup:

I also see that the Morph Influence is visible in the render preview, that's cool! And a good way to tell if it's working as intended.

Thanks!