Cages. Do you need to convert them to tris too?

3D4Eva

I wasn't sure if cages also need to be converted to tris if the low is also converted to tris. I guessed that the cage is just used to give an area for the rays to work within instead of using a cageless option like in painter.

If I have a low mesh converted to tris does the cage also need to have tris considering a quad could split the other way and result in a different geometry look between the low and cage?

Eric Chadwick

The triangles don't matter in a cage mesh, only the vertices do. The baker will cast a ray along a vector between a cage mesh's vertex towards the corresponding vertex on the lowpoly mesh. So the only correlation that really matters is whether the low and the cage share the same number of vertices, and the same ordering (like is required for a morph target or blend shape).

3D4Eva

Eric Chadwick said:

The triangles don't matter in a cage mesh, only the vertices do. The baker will cast a ray along a vector between a cage mesh's vertex towards the corresponding vertex on the lowpoly mesh. So the only correlation that really matters is whether the low and the cage share the same number of vertices, and the same ordering (like is required for a morph target or blend shape).

Thank you. So I guess if I have a converted mesh to tris on the low for baking I need to do it on the cage otherwise the vertex count won't match right?

Eric Chadwick

Nope. They should still match vertex count, regardless of being triangulated or not. Try it and see! 

3D4Eva

Eric Chadwick said:

Nope. They should still match vertex count, regardless of being triangulated or not. Try it and see! 

Yes, you're right the vertices are the same, just different edge count. Thank you.

EarthQuake

This may vary depending on the application you're using. If you triangulate (or edit the mesh in any way) the vertex order could change and this could cause problems if the app uses vert order to match the low to the cage.

In Marmoset Toolbag, custom cage meshes use UVs to match, so the geometry can vary significantly (different triangulation, different vertex count, etc) as long as the UVs are the same.