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xNormal - MASTER THREAD

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  • gaganjain
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    Wireframe and ray fails map

    sbmtest.jpg

    Tangent basis

    xnormal3dviwersho.jpg

    lowpoly mesh's settings
    setting.jpg
    max.f - 0.500
    max.r - 0.500
    use cage - trick mark
    smooth normals - use exported normals
    highpoly normals override tangent space - trick mark
    mesh scale - 1.00
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    Your settings seems to be correct ( btw the highpoly normals override tangent space is not really tricky ... it does nothing if you leave the "highpoly normals override file" empty ).

    The tangent basis for a perfect weld should show three axis ( one red, one green and one blue ). I see bunches of different tangent basis in the same vertex:

    uvweld.jpg

    This might indicate two things:

    1. (I don't this is the one is the guilty). The UVs aren't welded there. Probably this is not shown in the "wireframe and ray fails" map as UV seams because they differ less than one pixel... but it affects critically the tangent basis calculations. Probably if you render a really big(8kx8k map) "wireframe and ray fails" map you'll see some green pixels showing the seams.
    Solution for this: edit your mesh in 3dsmax, pass into Edito Mesh-face mode, select the conflictive parts, do a Unwrap UVW and weld the UVs selecting them with the mouse vertex per vertex(or use a 0.00000000 threshold ).


    2. ( I'm pretty sure it's due to this one :p ). Your smoothing groups are set to display a faceted/hard edge appeareance. What happens if you set the "Average vertex normals" in the correcponding lowpoly mesh's slot? If you see it well then A.the exporter went crazy for some reason, B. you need to revise the smoothing groups or C. My tangent basis calculation is very sensible to the face angle... so perhaps it's just my fault.

    I hope it helps.

    ps: Just by curiosity... why do you see the tangent basis axis's colors black? Or is just due to the JPG compression? You should see the axis green/blue/red and not black...
  • MRico
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    MRico polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks EarthQuake and jogshy, for the tip!

    I'm back with another question, this time about AO maps. My normal map comes out fine...but I'm using the same low-poly and same high-poly for the AO map and it comes out mostly white, I tried the GPU tool and just straight old school method and it comes out mostly white with both methods.

    My question is, do I need some kind of floor plane? Or sphere? Or do I need a different low-poly with different cage for AO maps? I'm just a bit confused, I tried my best at tweaking the settings but can't seem to get better results.
  • gaganjain
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    jogshy - tangent basis axis's colors black bcoz of JPG compression....
    Thanks Jogshy and EarthQuakei
    Problem was smooth normals was set use exported normal...so it was creating problem hard edge seams on map...
    When turn to use avreage normal map turn out to good...
    sbmtest.jpg

    Now can see red,blue and green
    tangmap.jpg

    mappreview.jpg

    Thnaks everyone for the help...
  • D4V1DC
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    D4V1DC polycounter lvl 18
    Where is the guide for batch processes?! I need to render some heavy shit and I would love to be able to do this over night as rendering takes quiet some time, please assist.

    Thank you! :)
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    $!nz wrote: »
    Where is the guide for batch processes?! I need to render some heavy shit and I would love to be able to do this over night as rendering takes quiet some time, please assist.

    Thank you! :)
    Open a console, go to the xn's installation folder (+\x86 or \x64) and put this:

    xNormal.exe -?

    It will show all the commands.

    BAsically, save some XML files(using xNormal, a text editor or programatically) and pass them as command arguments.

    You can also execute the Simple GPU AO tool from the command line.

    For xn4 I'm implementing also LUA and (perhaps) python scripting.
  • Xerilon
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    Xerilon polycounter lvl 13
    I should have done a search on this, but I don't know the keywords to my problem...

    This picture shows some weird behavior at a place which is the inner thigh seam of my character. I know the UV layout sucks as it was made automatic, but there is no overlap or anything technically wrong with it

    xnproblem.jpg


    xnproblem2.jpg

    I tried Xnormal for the first time last night and I am happy with the speed in which I can make maps, but I have much to learn it seems...

    Hope someone can give me a tip on this!
  • Renaud Galand
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    Renaud Galand polycounter lvl 19
    Xerilon : this is not a seam problem. It looks like your maximum F and maximum R ray casting in the lowpoly options are too big and what you take as a seam is in fact a part of one leg baked on the other. Try to reduce both values and you should be fine.
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    Xerilon, that happens when the ray distances are too large. Try to reduce them... but, probably, the best thing you can do to avoid those problems is to setup a cage.
  • RodrigoB
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    I tried xNormal for the first time a couple of days ago and everything went fine, but now the resulting maps are twisted in some way.

    screencap.png

    You can notice that the capital on top of the column is twisted in both AO and normal maps.
    What could be the problem?
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    RodrigoB wrote: »
    You can notice that the capital on top of the column is twisted in both AO and normal maps.
    What could be the problem?

    Seems to be a distorsion related to the cage. Did you move the vertices there?

    See this web:

    http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow_2.htm

    Notice the wobbling effect over the cylinder. That's because the cage controls not only the ray distance but also the ray direction.
    An advice: render a direction map with the cage enabled so you can see the distorsions.
  • RodrigoB
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    Thanks a lot. I'll try it out later ;)
  • ASTUS
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    Hello!

    Im new around here! but i browse these forums often for some amazing information! Today i registered as i have a question of my own.

    Im currently running Xnormal V3.16.4.3 Going to upgrade to v3.16.10 in a few second due to a problem that i have been encountering.

    Everything in xnormal is pretty straight forward and very easy a quick, gives great bakes at a very amazing speed....But.

    I load all my HighPoly Meshes>Then my Lowpoly Mesh> And my Low Poly Cage.

    Now when i render it takes forever - 15min for 1/100ths of a map on the lowest AA Setting with Medium High poly Meshes.

    When i remove the cage it bakes super fast.

    Am i not checking a option? or something? No cage = Fast Cage = Haven't Sucsessfully baked a map.

    Please Help

    Regards Ashton Woolley
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    ASTUS wrote: »

    Now when i render it takes forever - 15min for 1/100ths of a map on the lowest AA Setting with Medium High poly Meshes.

    When i remove the cage it bakes super fast.

    That's probably because a lot of rays are failing. Pls, post a "Wireframe and ray fails" map

    Sure your cage covers completely the highpoly mesh and that you check in the "Use cage" option. And sure also your UVs aren't overlapping.
    If you can post some screenshots will be better...
  • CastratedWeasel
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    CastratedWeasel polycounter lvl 10
  • felix_unger
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    Hello, I got turned on to xNormal pretty recently but I've been loving it so far, so first I'd like to offer my many thanks to Santiago for all of the work he has put into what is clearly labor of love.

    Now for my question (I've looked through the forum and have not found anything about this, so please forgive me if it's been covered already and I just managed to miss it)...

    Is it possible in xNormal to calculate the AO effect of one high res mesh on another but not have its actual geometry drawn into the AO map? When baking AO maps in Max, if a high res mesh has not been picked as Reference Geometry, it’s geometry will not get rendered into the AO for your low res mesh (nor will it get rendered into your normal map). But as long as the high res mesh is currently visible within the Max scene, it will still affect the lighting calculation.

    A hypothetical example would be a character with a badge on his chest where the badge is its own separate piece of geometry (unfortunately, I have specific reasons why I need to keep things separated like this). When baking maps for the character, I don’t want the actual badge geometry rendered into the AO (that will be rendered into its own AO map), but I do want the shadow caused by the badge to get rendered.

    Looking through the options currently available in xNormal, I’m not aware of any way of doing this. I had hoped that turning off a mesh’s “Visible” flag would do the trick, but that effectively takes it out of all the current calculations, and adjusting the projection cage isn’t an option in this case because my geometry is literally one right on top of the another. I suspect I might have to go back to Max to deal with these situations, but I figured I’d try throwing the question out there. Any thoughts?

    In any case, thank you again for making such a great tool!
  • CastratedWeasel
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    CastratedWeasel polycounter lvl 10
  • Joao Sapiro
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    Joao Sapiro sublime tool
    felix, then leave the geo , the shadow will be there, but the ao generated from the badge will be overlaped by the geometry no ?
  • felix_unger
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    Johny - unfortunately, no. In my real case, the ao generated from the one high res mesh (the badge in my made up example) is not completely overlapped by the low res version of it. You would still see a portion of it peeking out underneath. It occurred to me that I could try to paint it out in photoshop, but I was hoping there might be some trick to do it in xNormal.
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    Is it possible in xNormal to calculate the AO effect of one high res mesh on another but not have its actual geometry drawn into the AO map? When baking AO maps in Max, if a high res mesh has not been picked as Reference Geometry, it’s geometry will not get rendered into the AO for your low res mesh (nor will it get rendered into your normal map). But as long as the high res mesh is currently visible within the Max scene, it will still affect the lighting calculation.
    Nope, that's not possible in xn3.. but it will be for xn4. I'll let you specify which are the the highpoly meshes you wanna collide the rays with and which ones cast shadows over other, etc...
  • felix_unger
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    jogshy wrote: »
    Nope, that's not possible in xn3.. but it will be for xn4. I'll let you specify which are the the highpoly meshes you wanna collide the rays with and which ones cast shadows over other, etc...


    That is fantastic news! Can't wait! You are awesome!
  • frostymoose
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    frostymoose polycounter lvl 17
    Hey jogshy. Thanks for putting so much time & effort into this app. I'm just getting back into game art and I've been trying to use xNormal, but it won't start. When i try to launch, i get the hourglass for a split second but then nothing happens. Any ideas on what I can do? I've reinstalled it a couple times and even installed an older version I had on my HDD (3.12.0) but the result is the same.

    Any advice you (or anybody) could offer would be very helpful. thanks.
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    I'm just getting back into game art and I've been trying to use xNormal, but it won't start. When i try to launch, i get the hourglass for a split second but then nothing happens. Any ideas on what I can do? I've reinstalled it a couple times and even installed an older version I had on my HDD (3.12.0) but the result is the same.

    Any advice you (or anybody) could offer would be very helpful. thanks.
    To start, you need a SSE-compatible CPU(P3 or Athlon XP) or above. So, if you have a Duron or a K7 it won't run.

    Need Win2000 SP4/WinXP SP3 or above(Vista,W7,etc). I've not tested it on Windows Server 2003/2008 but it should run ok too.

    Try to re-install the .NET 2.0 and DirectX9/10. A Windows Update won't hurt neither.

    If you used WindowsLite to compress/pack the Windows\WinSXS folder that can be a problem...

    If nothing od this works do this two things:
    1. Run regedit.exe and erase the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Santiago Orgaz\xNormal
    2. Go to My Documents and erase completely the folder named xNormal.

    I hope it helps.
  • frostymoose
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    frostymoose polycounter lvl 17
    jogshy wrote: »
    To start, you need a SSE-compatible CPU(P3 or Athlon XP) or above. So, if you have a Duron or a K7 it won't run.

    Need Win2000 SP4/WinXP SP3 or above(Vista,W7,etc). I've not tested it on Windows Server 2003/2008 but it should run ok too.

    Try to re-install the .NET 2.0 and DirectX9/10. A Windows Update won't hurt neither.

    If you used WindowsLite to compress/pack the WindowsWinSXS folder that can be a problem...

    If nothing od this works do this two things:
    1. Run regedit.exe and erase the key HKEY_CURRENT_USERSantiago OrgazxNormal
    2. Go to My Documents and erase completely the folder named xNormal.

    I hope it helps.

    I have an intel core 2 duo 6750 so that's fine.
    I reinstalled .net and did a windows update. I reinstalled direct x just a couple days ago
    I erased the xnormal key
    I did not find an xnormal folder in my documents or anywhere besides the start menu and where I had downloaded/installed.

    I did install xnormal on my laptop, though and it starts up fine. Havent generated any maps with it yet, but I'm confident that I can get to work with it later today. Thanks

    (unfortunately the laptop is less than ideal... the onboard graphics cannot display normal maps! :P)
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    I did not find an xnormal folder in my documents or anywhere besides the start menu and where I had downloaded/installed.
    Notice the My Documents in Vista is in the c:/users/YouUserName/My Documents and not in c:/documents and settings as is in WinXP.
    There should be a folder and, almost, a XML file called last.xml there. Erasing the folder should reset the default settings.

    Also, see if executing it as Administrator or disabling the UAC solves the problem.
  • frostymoose
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    frostymoose polycounter lvl 17
    jogshy wrote: »
    Notice the My Documents in Vista is in the c:/users/YouUserName/My Documents and not in c:/documents and settings as is in WinXP.
    There should be a folder and, almost, a XML file called last.xml there. Erasing the folder should reset the default settings.

    Also, see if executing it as Administrator or disabling the UAC solves the problem.

    Actually I am on XP 32bit sorry I didn't mention it. I searched my C drive and the drive that xnormal is installed on and could not find a last.xml

    I don't think that the problem is with xnormal. Yesterday I installed the 3dsmax demo so I can export some models to unreal 3, but it will not start. The problem is the same as xnormal. When the app is run, the hourglass appears briefly, but then nothing happens. I'll try a few more things today. This is a very unusual (and frustrating) problem...


    Edit::

    as I suspected, symantec antivirus was somehow interfering with max and xnormal. Disabling it didn't work, but uninstalling did. So I've replaced my antivirus and I can get back to work. yaaay!
  • Alune
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    Hey. I'm using the latest xnormal, and I'm getting this error:

    errorlwh.jpg

    It's probably some kind of noobish mistake, but what am I doing wrong?
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    Alune wrote: »
    Hey. I'm using the latest xnormal, and I'm getting this error:

    errorlwh.jpg

    It's probably some kind of noobish mistake, but what am I doing wrong?

    Which kind of output format are you using? .OBJ, .SBM?
    And what program did you use to export the file?

    That error usually appears when the 3D modelling program you use writes corrupted data to a file or it has non-consistent UV data. What's happening is that some faces in the mesh aren't UV-mapped. Are ALL your lowpoly mesh's faces UV mapped?
  • EarthQuake
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    Your uvs are screwed up, make sure you're saving out the correct uv channel.
  • NoisyMonk
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    Greetings all.

    Ran into an interesting problem today.. this is my first time using XNormal (thanks Santiago!). As you can see from this pic, I've got some strange things happening.

    Edit: May have found the solution on Page 43 (god that took a long time to find). Someone else said they had this problem aswell, backface ray hits. The problem was flipped normals on their highpoly model export. I'm fairly new to ZBrush, so I'm not sure how I can check the normals when exporting? Any one know how to fix that?

    Edit again: found the option to flip in ZBrush.. :poly142:

    Last Edit, I promise: Can't figure out why I'm having edge problems... No smoothing groups, and each face is a seperate UV island... Tried all three 'Smooth Normals' in XNormal... -Use Exported Normals -Average Normals -Harden Normals... but get mostly the same result. Any thoughts?
  • pepur
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    pepur polycounter lvl 9
    Aye
    I have problem with bake cavity and normal map
    Low poly mesh i crate in Max (mapping uv too) next tesselate mesh for zbrush
    and export to zbrush for sculpting.
    At the end I export from zbrush hi poly version to obj
    Next step is baking maps with Xnormal and I have some problems
    I dont have change any options in xnormal, only setup rays with the rays
    calculator and add some value to end ray result(frontM +50 rearM +200)
    http://img20.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=errorcavity.jpg
  • Gibbage
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    NoisyMonk wrote: »
    Greetings all.

    Last Edit, I promise: Can't figure out why I'm having edge problems... No smoothing groups, and each face is a seperate UV island... Tried all three 'Smooth Normals' in XNormal... -Use Exported Normals -Average Normals -Harden Normals... but get mostly the same result. Any thoughts?

    Im having the same exact problem. I have tried saving as SMB, ASE, OBJ and all sorts of switches, but when I bring it into Xnormal, its like everything is on the same smoothing group! Im trying to use Xnormal for detail in a vehicle cockpit and with it smoothing everything its not working well for me. And yes, I am saving the normals in the export.
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    Gibbage wrote: »
    Im having the same exact problem. I have tried saving as SMB, ASE, OBJ and all sorts of switches, but when I bring it into Xnormal, its like everything is on the same smoothing group! Im trying to use Xnormal for detail in a vehicle cockpit and with it smoothing everything its not working well for me. And yes, I am saving the normals in the export.
    How are set your normals? Looks like they're averaged. For that kind of cube try the "Hard normals" or manually setup an independent smoothing group for each face. It's also a good idea to bevel a bit the edges to avoid ray misses.

    Btw... are you using a cage or uniform ray distances? If you use cages then the averaged normals will be used unless you break them manually.
    If you use uniform ray distances then depends on your settings ( user exported normals, average or hard ).

    Btw, I'm going to release the 3.16.11 soon with Maya 2010 support. If you have any bug report this is the moment to report it, thx :D

    And yes, I'm coding xn4 as fast as I can... but it's hard to work with such this 40deg hot! ( I definitely need an air conditioner :poly141: ) and the AMD guys did excesively well their job and released an OpenCL SDK sooner than we expected... so I'm playing a bit with it...
  • Snefer
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    Snefer polycounter lvl 16
    Feature request: I want a button where I can choose if I want to load the highpoly meshes or not in the viewer, under the 3D-viewer tab. :) Right now its kind of annoying that I have to deselect all the highpoly meshes to view my lowpoly in the viewer. When dealing with complicated bakes and multiple files this is an uneccesary hassle. When you have huge highpoly meshes they take forever to load, so I'd rather just not load them at all :)

    awesome app, use it all the time :)
  • killingpeople
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    killingpeople polycounter lvl 18
    looking forward to the new version!

    i would like to put in the request for a network render feature, like 3ds max's backburner.
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    looking forward to the new version!

    i would like to put in the request for a network render feature, like 3ds max's backburner.
    You already have one, but it works only in x86. See the hxGrid renderer.
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    Hey hey

    Any ideas why I'd get a bake that looks its half normal and half tangent space?

    My UV's aren't inverted, nor is anything overlapping. I've tried rendering with the average normals instead, to see if it was my mesh's normals, and that was also messed up.

    I've also played with the ray distances (5 to 10 to 100 to even 1000) and that didn't fix it either.

    Any help?
    22wt_brokennormals.jpg
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    Thought I'd chime in quickly to say it was the normals of my highpoly that were flipped. Reason I missed it before was I had them in a Group in max, which wasn't reseting the xform to the individual objects within the group. Lame. All fixed now!
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    xNormal 3.16.11 has been relesed:

    - Added support Maya 2010
    - Fixed a problem rendering tiled/wrapped maps. The UVs no longer need to be in range [0.0f,1.0f].

    Feel free to test it a bit.
    thx.
  • EarthQuake
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    jogshy wrote: »
    xNormal 3.16.11 has been relesed:
    - Fixed a problem rendering tiled/wrapped maps. The UVs no longer need to be in range [0.0f,1.0f].

    Just a note, its pretty standard to put our mirrored/instanced peices out of the 0-1 range when rendering, so we dont get any errors from the same thing rendering over something else. Will this still work with this new change?
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    Just a note, its pretty standard to put our mirrored/instanced peices out of the 0-1 range when rendering, so we dont get any errors from the same thing rendering over something else. Will this still work with this new change?
    It should, aye.
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    I have uploaded a new version (3.16.12RC1) with improved sampling of ambient occlusion, bent normals and radiosity normal maps. I decided to make a RC version because I touched several critical parts of the rasterizer so I expect several problems due to this :D, sorry
  • EarthQuake
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    another thing that i have been meaning to ask for a while:

    Is it possible to have an option in the AO generation to turn off rays hitting backfaces?

    The problem is when we add "floating" detail on top of the mesh, we get these little shadows surrounding them. And i think by turning of occlusion on the backfaces, the problem will be fixed(or better atleast). I can make a quick example for you sometime if you'de like.
  • jogshy
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    jogshy polycounter lvl 17
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    Is it possible to have an option in the AO generation to turn off rays hitting backfaces?
    Sure, I'll add an option for that. It's very easy.
  • System
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    System admin
    Just want to say thanks, xnormal is amazing, downloaded the update and will test it on my fixed system tomorrow :D

    edit - I mean today, it's past 2am here oops
  • vahl
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    vahl polycounter lvl 18
    EQ : yeah that's how I avoid having floaters cating shadows in XSI :) awesome if you can fix that quickly santi :)
  • Autocon
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    Autocon polycounter lvl 15
    loving the speed and results of Xnormal.

    But I have been running into a problem with my AO's. They seem to have these random splotchy dark spots all over the place. Not sure why. Would hate to have to go back to max for my AO renders :)

    My AO setup is the default that Xnormal comes with

    Here is an example of the model and map.

    splotchao.jpg
  • Zwebbie
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    Zwebbie polycounter lvl 18
    I just noticed I hadn't posted in this thread yet, even though I've been planning on thanking you ever since the DomWar. So hereby, thanks a lot, jogshy! xNormal is a great application.
  • Renaud Galand
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    Renaud Galand polycounter lvl 19
    Autocon : I may be wrong but it looks like you should increase the number of rays casted on your object (first option), try with 256 or higher.
  • Autocon
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    Autocon polycounter lvl 15
    Ah thanks Renaud worked like a charm :)
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