Maya - LOD's an Lightmaps
polycounter lvl 7
Hello all!
I am trying to figure out a smart way of making LOD versions of an object composed of multiple and repeated geometry, without affecting the lightmap UV channelin. So, I basically want to make sure that I do not get any overlapping UV's in the lightmap UV channel. I'm using Maya 2016.
As an example, I was modeling an office chair, which is composed of repeated elements, such as 5 legs, 5 wheels and 2 arms. So, I modeled the original LOD (LOD 0), and created an UV channel for the textures, and another one for the lightmap. But the thing is: in order to crate another LOD (LOD 1), I had to manually reduce the polys of each leg, each wheel etc, which made me spend a lot of time. That's why I am looking for a faster way.
So, I was told to use the reference editor in Maya and create a reference for a separated .ma file containing only one copy of each repeated object (with all UV's set correctly). This way, I only had one leg with one wheel in this .ma file.
Then, in the main scene, I took that referenced leg with wheels, duplicated it 4 ore times, and rotated them, in order to end up with 5 legs. I kept the transformations unfrozen. Then, I went to the UV editor and reorganized all the UV islands in the lightmap channel, making sure I didn't get any overlapping at all. LOD 0 was done.
After that, I went back to that .ma file containing only one leg with one wheel, and saved another copy, reducing their tris count.
I opened the main scene and replaced all the references of the leg with this new reference file (with reduced tris count). Everything was looking perfect and seemed to be working very well. But the surprise came when I opened the UV editor. As you can see, the image on the left shows the lightmap UV channel of LOD 0. And the lightmap of LOD 1 is on the right, and all messy (btw, I simply used the "Layout" function to automatically set the lightmap, and I know there is a lot to be improved in my UV's).
So, does anyone know how to prevent my UV's of being destroyed? Or maybe another way of doing the same thing?
There is nothing parented, and I also tried to freeze transformations after rotating the legs (but things got even worse).
I am trying to figure out a smart way of making LOD versions of an object composed of multiple and repeated geometry, without affecting the lightmap UV channelin. So, I basically want to make sure that I do not get any overlapping UV's in the lightmap UV channel. I'm using Maya 2016.
As an example, I was modeling an office chair, which is composed of repeated elements, such as 5 legs, 5 wheels and 2 arms. So, I modeled the original LOD (LOD 0), and created an UV channel for the textures, and another one for the lightmap. But the thing is: in order to crate another LOD (LOD 1), I had to manually reduce the polys of each leg, each wheel etc, which made me spend a lot of time. That's why I am looking for a faster way.
So, I was told to use the reference editor in Maya and create a reference for a separated .ma file containing only one copy of each repeated object (with all UV's set correctly). This way, I only had one leg with one wheel in this .ma file.
Then, in the main scene, I took that referenced leg with wheels, duplicated it 4 ore times, and rotated them, in order to end up with 5 legs. I kept the transformations unfrozen. Then, I went to the UV editor and reorganized all the UV islands in the lightmap channel, making sure I didn't get any overlapping at all. LOD 0 was done.
After that, I went back to that .ma file containing only one leg with one wheel, and saved another copy, reducing their tris count.
I opened the main scene and replaced all the references of the leg with this new reference file (with reduced tris count). Everything was looking perfect and seemed to be working very well. But the surprise came when I opened the UV editor. As you can see, the image on the left shows the lightmap UV channel of LOD 0. And the lightmap of LOD 1 is on the right, and all messy (btw, I simply used the "Layout" function to automatically set the lightmap, and I know there is a lot to be improved in my UV's).
So, does anyone know how to prevent my UV's of being destroyed? Or maybe another way of doing the same thing?
There is nothing parented, and I also tried to freeze transformations after rotating the legs (but things got even worse).