[Max] mesh exploder for baking normal maps

hannes d

Hello

I started creating a mesh exploder for baking normal maps
here is my progress so far

feel free to let me know your ideas and feedback

planned features 

- recognise lowpoly / hipoly mesh 
- name them, link them
- explode mesh, hp follows lp
- setup baking, projection, cage etc
- bake normal map, apply to non exploded preview lp mesh

the idea has been in my head for a while but decided to actually start on it this evening
progress so far

Pac_187

Hey, though it's already a bit old and the website doesn't exist anymore, you might want to take a look at RTTassist.
It already does what you are about to create. http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/rttassist
The Youtube videos and downloads are still available on Scriptspot.

Just wanted to give a hint before you dive deeper into development, because this is going to result in a pretty big task :P

hannes d

i have heard about it several years ago ,never tried it though :P
but the download link is actually down
scriptspot doesnt allow you to upload scripts, only link to external sources (as far as i am aware)

so since their website is down all images and download links on scriptspot are too.

edit: i stand corrected, can download the attachment from scriptspot
----------------------
talking about down, the internet was down on work all day so had some spare time to continue on this and managed to create the highpoly lowpoly link
now lowpoly mesh gets exploded and the highpoly follows it
it does it currently based on name suffix _HP and _LP and need the exact same name

now i need to think of a way to add support for floaters
i already have support for linking several objects but havent decided yet how i ll find them, let alone automatically 


in the giv blue meshes are highpoly, white meshes are lowpoly
the highpoly meshes keep their offset compared to their lowpoly

the blue one that doesnt move in the middle is a floater

next goals:
think of a way how the user or script should link them
do i want to base it on:
-name
-position 
-size bounding box 

Zombiecrackers

This looks awesome! Colour me interested for sure!

hannes d

trying to do it based on position, center, and/or bounding box is fancy but it leaves tricky situations like highpoly floaters, or 2 meshes with the center or position on same location
example : a sphere inside of a donut

the program cant autodecide which mesh the floater belongs to since pivot is offset quite a bit
could use a floater namingconvention and attach it to a mesh under it with raycast
but then there is the hassle of which direction will the raycast take into account
a easy way to do it is let the artist manually link floaters to the highpoly meshes, this would work but involves manual work

also i think i can assume that when an artist makes a model he names at least the lowpoly parts. then again if they all get combined in 1 mesh at the end you could skip the naming step 
so doing it based on naming conventions is the easiest way but i assume some people dont always use them, especially when quickly modelling stuff, or personal work

someone sended me a private video of a tool that does exactly what i am planning to do
and they seem to manually assign lowpoly highpoly, and dont use floaters
it seems it is based on position, which i originally had planned however it comes with the disadvantage that if your pivot changes this would break it

current plan
-link HP and LP based on naming conventions
-create autonamingconvention that guesses the correct name for the highpoly if your models are called "box004" instead of "magazine_LP"
-manually link floaters to hp parent as part of modelling stage

floaters could also be guessed based on closeness to a mesh its center, but this will lead to not always correct results
so this should be discouraged imo since easy to miss
or could guess based on naming convention also

this leaves what if we have 2 highpoly meshes for 1 lowpoly

magazine_01_HP
magazine_02_HP

magazine_a_HP
magazine_b_HP

or could also be solved by manually linking to main highpoly
just like floaters
then their name doesnt matter

Amatobahn

Are you targeting a certain third party baker or using Max's render to texture? If it is the latter I would suggest a completely different route using material IDs. You would then not have to worry about exploding the mesh at all.

hannes d

@Amatobahn
the end goal is third party bakers like xnormal
but atm i am only using max 
the material ID sounds interesting. Do you have any more info about this 

monster

Your models need to have material IDs assigned, then enable "Hit only matching Material ID".

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2017/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-DDD1FDA0-AB02-44F5-BA93-44F0641961D4-htm.html

hannes d

sweet

hannes d

update

added projection modifier and combine meshes

hannes d

got v1.0 up

scriptspot page is awaiting approvel, here is the download link meanwhile
http://www.scriptspot.com/files/u53562/explode_1.0.ms

atm recognises low and highpoly based on name
supports custom pre and suffix

tweak the slider to make it explode

then click create projection and it adds the projection modifier and all highpolies to the modifier
(or export to xnormal or whatever)

need to make a gif but cant atm :P