Answered: Normals to 3DO workflow

KurtR

Tried to find some documentation on workflow in regards of baked normals to 3DO.

Let's say I have a baked normal map I take into NDO and further refine there. Then I want to take everything into 3DO with IDs and such. I can't get my head around how to make this a fluid process. Now I save out from Ndo in a really weird manner.

Is there any workflow tips on how to make this process flow better?

Synaesthesia

Could you give me a specific idea of the workflow you're trying to develop?

KurtR

It's mostly getting the link between Ndo and Ddo to work more fluid. I might be missing something about this, but currently I find all the temp saves happening, and what I am actually saving out, slightly confusing. If I manually save out my normals I need to flip them. I understand they do get flipped through the exporter in Ddo, but if I am working on my normals, I actually don't quite understand what I am saving out at times. If it's the quixel based normals or the ones I need to flip, and the structure of my saves in themselves. And in the process a lot of files are created in my current directory.

In Ddo by itself I am not confused, it's just the process when I am first and foremost working on pre-baked normals in Ndo and tweaking those before going into Ddo and how to structure this process better.

Might be that I just need to read through the documentation again to get it more clearly defined in my head.

Synaesthesia

There is currently no link between NDO and DDO. They're separate programs and are designed to work independent of one another.

You shouldn't need to flip normals unless your engine requires it, and even then that's only necessary before importing to the engine.

If you're editing flipped normals, your best bet is to flip them before working on them so that they're Y+ while using 3DO.

KurtR

Thanks, Synaesthesia. I can work with that, I just wasn't sure if I was missing something.  Just getting clarification helps a lot.