Where are cages in maya for baking normals?

StormRider1152

Alright. Alot of people whom use 3d Max and other softwares are telling me that my bakes need a cage file.

I'm using Maya and there's nothing for cages in the autodesk knowledge for Maya.

Could someone explain this?

Bake.

kodde

Afaik there's no support to use a cage with Maya's transfer maps feature.

StormRider1152

Oh, OK. So what's the work around then?

kodde

There's this temporary envelope mesh being created when you choose to display the projection envelope. I've tried fiddling with that before but from what I remember I didn't manage to get anything useful out of it. Not like a cage anyway. I might be wrong though.

jStins

You can manipulate components on the envelope, but it's not quite as flexible as having a separate cage mesh.

huffer

There's the envelope, that determines projection distance, and under Transfer maps settings, you have in the last tab the option Geometry Normals or Surface Normals, aka - use cage method (averaged ray projection I believe) or don't use cage.

StormRider1152

Oh, I'm already using surface normal's.

ActionDawg

You can always use an external program like xNormal or any other baker.

Scruples

The cage is around us, it surrounds us and binds us together....

Actually Maya will create one when envelope distance is set to anything higher than 0, should also check display options as seen here (mesh, envelope, both), you can even move it's verts around like a regular cage before bake!

throttlekitty

I do some baking in Maya and some in xNormal. When I'm ready to move to XN, I like to pull a duplicate of the generated cage (+any tweaks I may have needed to do to it), and also export that as an obj.

Back to the OP, the cage limits ray distance to keep bake times low. In other apps, the cage can also skew the casted ray direction, but in Maya we just use either geo or surface normals just fine. Generally you want the tightest fit without any poke-through you can. Some areas might be problematic or only a few areas poking through; it's fine to adjust the verts on the cage like Scruples says.

huffer

StormRider1152 said:

Oh, I'm already using surface normal's.

Just use geometry normals = cage projection; surface is without cage

kodde

But does altering the envelope's geometry (editing component mode) actually alter the end results? I have a vague memory of me trying it out and coming to the conclusion that it didn't. I might be wrong though.

Scruples

@kodde You're right it has absolutely no effect on the direction of the rays, disappointing.

kodde

It's too bad. Would have been really useful.