Baking with Average Normals using a Cage?

3D4Eva

I have a bit of a question,I bake with painter usually with avg normals so I will smooth the low with one group and bake with the high, but I wanted to know about using a cage for this. Normally if I used a cage it would be for non avg normals where I make my hard edges seams.

In painter if I select cage it grays out the checkboxes. Does this mean I cannot use a cage for this?

Or if I have the cage like the low poly with one smoothing group it will avg based on the cage with the same effect but granting me with the ability to bake objects close like fingers and not use the ray distance feature?

poopipe

You're possibly misunderstanding what average normals does. 

Quoted from the docs.
If enabled, computes the average normal of a vertex to know in which direction to send rays during the mesh matching process of baking. If disabled, the rays will follow the original vertex normals of the mesh.

It affects the direction rays are cast, not the normals of the mesh itself

When you use a cage, rays are cast between the mesh vertex and the equivalent vertex In the cage  so it's affecting the normals in the same way and the two things can't happen at the same time.

3D4Eva

poopipe said:

You're possibly misunderstanding what average normals does. 

Quoted from the docs.
If enabled, computes the average normal of a vertex to know in which direction to send rays during the mesh matching process of baking. If disabled, the rays will follow the original vertex normals of the mesh.

It affects the direction rays are cast, not the normals of the mesh itself

When you use a cage, rays are cast between the mesh vertex and the equivalent vertex In the cage  so it's affecting the normals in the same way and the two things can't happen at the same time.

I do know what avg and non avg mean I just didn't know if using a cage with avg normal limits the frontal and rear distance (the ray distance). This is why I used the fingers as an example for this because in such cases a cage is useful to avoid rays going beyond where they should with a static distance value. The cage would direct it.

Ghogiel

the cage replaces the distance searching and the direction of the raycast (be they averaged or the meshs vert normal direction).

So cages do the same thing, it's just added complexity to have manually controllable distances on a per vertex basis. Good for exactly like the situations like tight in the fingers.

3D4Eva

Ghogiel said:

the cage replaces the distance searching and the direction of the raycast (be they averaged or the meshs vert normal direction).

So cages do the same thing, it's just added complexity to have manually controllable distances on a per vertex basis. Good for exactly like the situations like tight in the fingers.

My confusion is happening because if I load a cage it changes the average normals checkbox to gray which gives me the impression painter only allows a cage when using non avg normals.

I could test it of course as baking an object using one or the other will have a different result on edges to see if it actually works or not, but I'm trying to be 100% as to why it does this and if I'm not allowed to use a cage to direct the rays for averaged normals.

Ghogiel

3D4Eva said:

Ghogiel said:

the cage replaces the distance searching and the direction of the raycast (be they averaged or the meshs vert normal direction).

So cages do the same thing, it's just added complexity to have manually controllable distances on a per vertex basis. Good for exactly like the situations like tight in the fingers.

My confusion is happening because if I load a cage it changes the average normals checkbox to gray which gives me the impression painter only allows a cage when using non avg normals.

I could test it of course as baking an object using one or the other will have a different result on edges to see if it actually works or not, but I'm trying to be 100% as to why it does this and if I'm not allowed to use a cage to direct the rays for averaged normals.

If the custom cage mesh has only modified it's vertices based on an averaged vertex normal, then the cage has what the averaged normals tick box would do built into the mesh already.

3D4Eva

Just to clarify, if I'm using a cage which is a duplicate of my low poly (the one I would use for avg normals), it disables the checkbox in Painter, but since the cage is averaged as well it will have the same effect to direct the ray direction as if I just used no cage with avg normals, but adds the benefit of controlling the distance which is good for things like fingers.

Am I getting this right?

3D4Eva

Can anyone confirm if I wanted to use the averaged normals way but have a cage would I just need to make sure my cage is a single smoothing group and not split up like you would with non avg?

Ghogiel

The cage mesh will be "averaged normals" if you expanded/pushed/inflated it based on an averaged normal direction of it's verts.

in the best case smoothing on the cage is ignored.

3D4Eva

Ghogiel said:

The cage mesh will be "averaged normals" if you expanded/pushed/inflated it based on an averaged normal direction of it's verts.

in the best case smoothing on the cage is ignored.

Thank you. So I would need to expand the cage in that way to get the same effect while being able to manage the ray distance. This helps! Thanks!

I wanted to know because I only used cages prior when baking with non-averaged so I wasn't sure on the approach for averaged as I thought I was stuck using the ray distance sliders as opposed to having a cage.