Staubkopf's LearningThread

Staubkopf

Hello there Polycount

Ive been a lurker for quite some time now and i wanted to finally start posting things here. I started simple with some Tutorials and now that ive been trying it on my own, i struggle with some nasty issues. Basically i modeled a very simple screwdriver to create my first normal map. After that i created the Lowpoly like here:



Then i did all the UVs, applying hard edges in the seams. Here are the UVs:







After ive done that, i baked a normal map in xNormal. I used the default settings and created the cage inside xNormal. And the normal map looked like this:



the extrusions look really good but the rest doesnt somehow. I cant figure out what im doing wrong, i tried increasing the geometry a little but it didnt help
Here you can see the shading issues a little closer:





im also getting some really strong seams, what can i do about them?



Well originally i planned to start out with the simple stuff, working my way up and then start posting some real things like a gun os so, but unfortunately i cant even pass this screwdriver^^ :poly127:
Heres the scene if anyone wants to look at it:

http://www.filedropper.com/screwdriverscene

Any Help is desired badly

greets

bkost

Bump

Seams are funky, I'm having the same issues

Staubkopf

Hi bkost

"Glad to see" that another person also has problems ^^

i found out that i hadnt set up my hard and soft edges properly... they were hard from the beginning in the modeling process and gave me seams. Now that i have changed them to soft edges the seams completely disappeard You just have to set them up properly. this is what my screwdriver looks now:



The seam issues was fixed but new Problems arrived. I tried exploding the scene to get better results, and now i have something in my maps that looks like some drops^^ lol. I tried to cap off the cylinders but that wasnt a good idea as seen here:



And this is what my map looks now:



Any comments and/or hints are more then welcome

Spiffy

If you haven't yet, check out these threads

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=107196

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81154

First one is probably most relevant to your situation. (getting rid of seams etc.)

You were making the right move when you decided to explode the model. I could be wrong but it looks like your low poly and high poly don't match up now though and some parts are intersecting.

Reimport the exported meshes into what ever modeling software you're using to check if the meshes line up. If they do, make sure Xnormal isn't doing any scaling on the meshes either.
Also check your cage settings and make your cage in an external program and export it out to Xnormal(scale along normals) just to ensure Xnormal isn't doing anything crazy with your mesh.

Also make sure that if you do cap, cap on both the highpoly and low poly. It looks like the lowpoly caps might be picking up geometry from other areas, meaning it's rays didn't hit a surface.

Staubkopf

Hi Spiffy

Thank for your Comment. Ive been reading through the suggested threads but obviously i havent understand them enough... Ill give it a second read.

What do you mean by intersecting? I thought that the low and high poly have to intersect each other as close as possible in terms of their silhouette. I paid attention that they line up closely, especially after exploding the scene, but ill see if thats really how it is.
And for reimporting the meshes, i exported them both in a single file, one for the lowpoly and one for the highpoly as objs. In xNormal the line up perfectly, but ill double check that

Ill check out the other things you suggested, thanks man

skodone

ure right staubkopf they msut be as close as possible and can easily intersect

what you have here are ray fails (if you bake with xNormal you can even bake the ray fails as a map and it will show you where the rays didnt find a proper mesh)

to avoid this try different ray distances and check out if the results get better (or wors:)
if fI your model is veryvery small scaled the default raydistance is far too high... had that with my last model and got best results at raydistance 0.1 oO
also may recheck your cage manually (go to your modeling program duplicate mesh and scale by normal until it FULLY covers the lowpoly, here you dont want any intersection
and you should get awesome results.
as for the uvs look good if the smoothing groups are applied correctly you should get a nice bake...

Staubkopf

Hello skodone

i tried using different ray distances, both in frontal and rear but the normal hasnt changed a bit. Or am i only allowed to change on setting for example on rear 0.5 and on front 2.5?

I tried it with a custom cage from maya and it worked
I also capped off the holes in both the low and highpoly, hadnt done this properly.
So anyway this is how the map looks now:



It looks so much better than the previous ones. Finally ^^

So all the details are now correct and so is the shading:







Im very happy about this result, its closer to what i liked it to be

I do have some questions left though;

@Spiffy How do i check the scale of an Object in xNormal? Via the 3D Viewer? Or change the global mesh size in the meshes directories?

Also when i exported my meshes out of maya i used the obj format. However xNormal refused to accept my cage mesh. It always said "has not the same amount of vertices as the low poly mesh", even though i only scaled the vertices in the normal axis in maya. I doublechecked the Polycount and it was fine, no change in numbers. Impossible since i only scaled up the mesh.
However when i exported the files as an FBX it worked... not shure what to think of this, i guess ill go with fbx then?

I also tried to render out some images in Quixels 3Do, but the lowPolyMesh i mapped the normal map on was showing only hard edges. I tried smoothing it before exporting out of maya but that didnt help either. How does one make a lowpoly mesh look smooth in a third party program?

Well thats about it, thanks for all your help guys. Ill try some stuff and ill return when i have a more complicated mesh going

thx, Staubkopf

Spiffy

I was just talking about these guys, make sure they are set to 1.00, or at least an identical number, If the scales are different it will cause intersections (the type you don't want) and if it's too small you'll get bake errors.

Haven't run into that error before, so I'm not sure I can help you too much. Just make sure you are triangulating the mesh on export and all the smooth groups and seams are identical.

If you keep running into this and you can't fix it, Remove the Lowpoly from Xnormal and import JUST the cage into Xnormal as an individual mesh with UV coords rather than adding it onto the low poly and tick "Use Cage".
So in the end the only things that touch Xnormal are your cage mesh and high poly.

I'm not sure if this is standard procedure for getting correct bakes but It has worked for me in the past.
But yeah, if FBX works go with that.

What version of 3Do are you using?, I had the same problem with earlier versions before they did the UI update (not sure what version that was). Never figured it out, just got a newer version after I bought it.

Staubkopf

Hey there Spiffy

The Mesh scale is on 1 for all meshes.

Yes i did triangulate the meshes before exporting them. I assume that if i exported the lowpolyesh i can easily duplicate it after, and just scale it in the normal direction so it acts as a cage. However xNormal keeps complaining^^
Well, ill try it out with a different size, maybe my model is really too small.

ill try your option of using JUST the cage. Sounds a little unusual but if it helped you it might also helps me

Ill go with FBX then.

For 3Do im using the Quixel Suite 1.8. Thats the latest Version.

Thanks for your tips