How to bake down fabric

Doxturtle

I have made this deck chair:


It has this fabric part:



How would I go about creating the low poly and baking this down?

Eric Chadwick

Just like you would for any other normal map bake. I don't understand how this is really that different?

Are you concerned about the stitching detail not being readable after baking? A non-hero asset like this would get a 512x512 map of its own, tops. So then you would want to mirror and overlap UVs significantly to maximize pixel resolution. Though if it's a dirty chair, then you would either need a unique UV for the fabric, or you would blend a separate dirt texture on top using another UV.

Are you wondering about the loop over the metal pole? Just make the metal pole using the number of sides you want, then duplicate that and push it out to start the fabric loop model.

Doxturtle

What I mean is, I created the low poly and the cage like this:



But when I try and bake I end up with this kind of result:

Eric Chadwick

Your bake might be grabbing both sides of the fabric. It helps to think about the lowpoly and how you're going to re-use UVs, while you're modeling the highpoly.

For example I would make the lowpoly 1-sided, then after baking I would duplicate and flip the flat part of the fabric (not the loop ends) so the back side re-uses the same map space as the front. Knowing this, I would only model the front of the highpoly fabric. 

What software and renderer are you using the bake? This looks like 3ds Max with Render To Texture. Are you using the Mentalray renderer? It has trouble with the lowpoly intersecting the highpoly, it grabs from BOTH models. There's a way to hide the lowpoly from it, I'm forgetting the method right now.

Doxturtle

Sorry, I don't really understand what you are trying explain, at the moment my low poly fabric looks like this:



The main part is single sided but the loop comes round and overlaps partly, this is where the stitches and stuff would be in the high poly. 

I am using 3DS max render to texture, it has worked fine for every other model I have baked, it worked perfectly for the rest of the model like the wooden beams. 

Would you mind showing how you would set up this kind of mesh? I am not really understanding properly. Thanks

Eric Chadwick

What does your model look like with a checker texture? For example this one:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/File:Uvrefmap_circles_letters.jpg

Doxturtle

I fixed it, for some reason my UV's on the fabric decided to break since the last time I checked them XD

I probably should have checked that first..