Poor Bake results. Suggestions?

Krato

Made this shack in blender, brought it over to substance for baking and I noticed a lot of areas had bad baking results. I've seen the official baking tutorial and I know there is a naming convention but I thought that was for _high _low baking. Everything I have here is just one low poly object divided into two texture sets. I'm not sure what I can do to solve this... Should I "explode" the mesh? 



https://gyazo.com/180685436ce66e571567d0568cbd07c9

Krato

I tried moving some of the trouble areas out a bit. It didnt really help too much




EDIT: I spread out the meshes even more and re-imported > baked. the bad bake is only remaining on the wooden beam and the rope now. Is exploding the objects resulting in a larger bake cage?

FourtyNights

You don't need to explode your meshes when baking with Allegorithmic products.
https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/display/SPDOC/Matching+by+name

Krato

FourtyNights said:

You don't need to explode your meshes when baking with Allegorithmic products.
https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/display/SPDOC/Matching+by+name

Would I be able to accomplish this without a high poly? If I was to name each of the poorly baked parts X_low would they each get their own cage? Would this not also result in splitting up the groups I made, resulting in additional texture sets?

Jerc

The texture sets are based on the materials assignements, not the mesh names. So you can rename your objects.

Krato

Jerc said:

The texture sets are based on the materials assignements, not the mesh names. So you can rename your objects.

Material 1 = Texture Set 1 (I made color_IDs earlier)


Material 2 = Texture Set 2


In order for these two materials (shack_exterior, shack_interior) to continue sharing the same map all the parts of the meshes need to be joined together. For example, I assigned the same material to all the parts selected on the top picture, if they were not joined, they would not all be displaying on the same map to the right of the model. Same applies for the bottom. When the meshes are joined, I can't go in and rename them (third image). I want to keep keep the total amount of texture sets low, so when I someday import to a game engine I dont have 50 maps for each individual building. This is where I am stuck. 

This is where I need to advice, I understand that there is a naming convention and I understand that materials become texture maps. I just don't know how to do it regarding this. If I want a atlas, meshes need to be joined, if they are joined, they dont have individual names. 

edit: I'm going through the official tutorials to see if I can recreate the steps in blender.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCa-M0_7pl0

Krato

I have followed along with the tutorials and tried to recreate the steps he did. 

1. I split up the low poly exterior mesh into parts while keeping them all the same material. Now there are two materials total in the project. All the outside stuff, planks, logs, roofing, are all one material; while the walls and interior are another material.  


2. I imported them into painter and baked by name.


Unfortunately there are still strange artifacts going on and they are still quite similar to what I had before. Really unsure what to do here.

Krato

I've been re-importing and baking repeatedly for hours now. I think part of the problem I am facing is that the window planks and other meshes share the same map space. I was trying to be efficient with the space... bad idea i guess. Additionally, tweaking the  AO bake settings helped a bit, but I don't think I was using it as intended. I will make another object and try to approach the mapping differently. 

Krato

So I spent the last several hours remaking an entirely new shack and I approached things differently. I feel like I am getting closer to solving a lot of the bake issues I've had. 

A new question has come up though. Is there a way to bake onto the "Shack_interior" texture set only so I don't get the effects of the "Shack_exterior" baking onto it? The second image and the GIF at the bottom show the effect of the exterior's artifacts. 



https://gyazo.com/cb45f14db4da0f3b87a6ff644b0edd5b