Barrel Baking Practise

yaschan

I have done several barrels before using xNormal. I tried again if I could do cleaner result than before. Earthquake's MEGAFANTASTIC thread here has been big help for me to understand how this stuff works.

I used cage when baking out these and edited the cage to get rid of the waviness.
I had to use clone brush to get rid of some detail which didn't really work out, so there's a slight splotch there, and also the corners are not perfect. But do you think is this level of precision enough for production level model? I slapped old texture I made some years ago just to test this out. I must redo that as well just to see if the imperfections still show through.

http://imgur.com/0xBNdrL
http://imgur.com/eOAxrZP
http://imgur.com/lLE0C6O
http://imgur.com/l2mMs0V
http://imgur.com/1gUnTvt
http://imgur.com/6bONqng
http://imgur.com/YcpPhx9

m4dcow

I mean it's a barrel, looks fine to me but....

yaschan wrote: »

I had to use clone brush to get rid of some detail which didn't really work out,

If you are doing this.... you are doing it wrong.

So with a barrel, obviously there aren't going to be that many revisions or whatever on the high poly and thus normal.... but for some other more complicated asset that had say 50 revisions to the high poly or something crazy, means that you have to go in and do that clone brush operation 50 times, maybe even more if you have to clone brush an AO bake etc...

yaschan

The only reason I used clone brush was because the high poly had unnecessary feature I didn't want. I agree, we must always try to get the bake right especially in more complex models for that reason.

Dan Powell

Show the high poly asset? What was the error/unnecessary feature that you needed to paint out?

The bake you have looks fine; it's captured all of the detail I'd imagine as expected. No errors on the screenshots?

However, don't be afraid to use more geometry too. We're in 2015, and modern GPUs (especially for AAA games) can chuck around Polygons. Just always bare in mind how many times the asset will be used throughout the scene.

Here's an example of a random Barrel I made for reference on putting topology into the silhouette; http://puu.sh/kvgVA.png

Remember to think about the angle they'll be seen from, and the type of environment they'll be in. These are like 1400 triangles each, which when you look at their wireframe, really doesn't feel too intensive for modern games. I put some extra loops in to help get a good silhouette from them.

To get rid of the waviness, like I have done, use more sides. I think I used 32 sides there. You can skew the cage outwards but honestly having to do a lot of tweaking with the cage can get tedious, especially if your art leader asks you to change your high poly

yaschan

Thanks a lot for replying to my thread!

The bake I did earlier actually had issues with the cage. My cage tweaks in xNormal's cage editor were not perfect. I was able to improve on it: http://imgur.com/tY2VVgI

Your random Barrel look absolutely awesome. Mine has only 24 sides, (786 tris in final). Indeed using more geometry would make a cleaner result.

Couldn't agree more; some super advanced cage tweaks can be super tedious.

anyway here's the low poly and high poly
http://imgur.com/8UfW12Q
http://imgur.com/QmqFPfi

the small detail I wasn't pleased with was this air hole or some kind of sunken thingy which is sometimes a feature in gasoline barrels: http://imgur.com/QjsXqdq

This feature got skewed in the baked normal map and also I don't think it's necessary. I might do it in ndo.

m4dcow

A little off topic, but embed the actual imgur image link using the insert image option, you will get more feedback if people don't have to click of links to open the images.

yaschan

m4dcow wrote: »

A little off topic, but embed the actual imgur image link using the insert image option, you will get more feedback if people don't have to click of links to open the images.

sorry about that. ok.

Dan Powell

What software are you modelling this in?

I use 3DS Max and use the Projection Modifier - which allows you to create a cage inside 3DS Max. You can then use the XNormal Plugins to Export the low poly model + Cage, and the high poly model - works well. I've never used the Cage editor inside of XNormal because it looked a bit too fiddly for me.


Low poly looks good to me - you could try cutting the hexagon shape on the top of the barrel actually into the geometry on the top of the barrel - make them one object (because in real life they'd be welded together). You'll get a nice smooth transition between the two on your bake then so it'll look like they're flowing into one another/welded

yaschan

Dan, big thanks for great tip about projection modifier + xnormal plugin. I tried it today, works great!
It's way better than xNormal's fiddly 3D edit. I still can see myself using that to test some things but editing cage is best done in max.
I use Lightwave and Max. Sometimes only Max but there are some things I still prefer to do in LW as I am not so experienced with Max modeling tools.
I made higher poly version with 32 sides to compare the difference. I will show later.
I thought that the hexagon thing is some kind of cap to be screwed off?

yaschan

This asset will be used multiple times, it can be that as many as ten might be visible at one time.

Dan Powell

yaschan wrote: »

I thought that the hexagon thing is some kind of cap to be screwed off?

Ah OK - yes, it might be.

Completely depends on the barrel that you're modelling. On the example one I linked above for you the hexagon part was welded on, and there was a cylindrical cap.