Baking Normal maps in maya using floating geometry

Phobos

I'm having a little bit of a problem baking normal maps in maya using floating geometry to create my high poly model. It seems maya either doesn't like floating geometry much or I'm doing something wrong. I set the serach envelope to search inside and outside the envelope. I've tried tangent and object space. Neither work properly.





Has anyone experienced this? Are there any external normal map generation programs I should look at?

Thanks

ironbearxl

XNormal: http://www.santyesprogramadorynografista.net/projects.aspx

cholden

That does look weird.

Try putting your floaties BEHIND the main piece (sounds wrong, sometimes works).
OR
Render floaties on their own, combined the two normal maps in photoshop.

Jeff Parrott

What version of Maya is this? 6.0 and 6.5 have a different normal map util than 7.0 does.

Marine

from the angled pic, it looks like your floating pieces are really far apart, try bringing them in so they're not quite touching the pieces below them. if you're still having problems, you can edit the envelope manually. from what little i've done messing with the envelopes, it seems that you can add extra edges to get it tighter than the low poly mesh would allow.

Guriamo

did you try to bake each object individually, then put it together in PS?

Phobos

Hey guys. Thanks for the input.

This morning I tried to edited the envelope and move the floaties closer to the low res model. However I'm getting more or less the same results. I've tried several different option set ups and nothing seems to work. Sometimes it partically renders the high res geometry on it.

Here are my settings:


Here are the results:


I'm going to try baking them individually, however for long term use that method doesn't seem time effective for me to use. I'm also going to move the floaties behind the object and see if that works. Its simple enough to bake a normal map with the geometry imbebbed in the high res cage but it seems maya doesn't like floating pieces.

I'll keep you updated.

EarthQuake

Personally i think modeling those 2 insets into your lowpoly will do more to hurt the quality than to help it, simply because your lowpoly edges will not match up to your much smoother highpoly edges. And they barely change the form at all, if i was going to model out anything in the low for that texture it would be the 3 things at the top that actually stick out.

Phobos

Yea thats what I was thinking as I was modeling it.
I haven't had a chance to try too much with high poly texture normal maps. I'll take those out and maybe just reconstruct the whole thing to see if I can get any better results.

adam

fuckin' n00b

Phobos

...

That was uncalled for Adam. I come in here everyday and work to the best of my ability. All you do is put me down. I've had other offers at other companies. I came to threewave because of the people and the atmosphere. Now I'm not quite sure I want to continue my stay at work here.

adam

bhaaaahahaha.. suck it up princess. Get back to work.

Phobos

... fine I'd like a bowl of noobios though.

I was able to come to a solution with to my problem. I think the key is the orientthe floating geometry behind the object. I did this with a plane and then a high detailed model and it seemed to work out alright. I'm doing some more testing and will post my final results in a little bit.

EarthQuake

Adam calling people noobs. Thats fucking priceless right there.

adam

[ QUOTE ]
Adam calling people noobs. Thats fucking priceless right there.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fuck you Asian sub-d h0m0.

EarthQuake

mmmmmmmm asian sub-d

malcolm

Not sure what the problem is, I got this result with all default settings. Make sure you center the pivot and freeze the transform of both models before you add them to the baker. Oh yeah and what the f is up with this thread, I can't link in thumbnails so enjoy the gigantic picture.

Phobos

Ya I was able to get that far yesterday. However the real problem is baking from model to model not onto a plane. I haven't experimented further with that yet but I know nothing is wrong with my settings now.

Heres what I got to yesterday.

EarthQuake

Seriously just use xnormal or something. You'll probablly need ambient occlusion maps and xnormal is going to be like 10x faster than whatever you can get from maya.