little normal map tip

Ruz

Just thought I would share this, though most of you already know it.
If you have overlapping uv's and you wannna render out your normal map with RTT in max, to avoid messing up , select one of the elements that overlaps and change the w setting to 1.
(you know you have uvw)
so in theory one of your elements has 'w' set to 0 and the other set to a value that is anything apart from 0.
The geezer from autodesk showed me that when he was doing a demo.

Eric Chadwick

Huh, never thought to move on W. I always just move on U or V and leave the chunks out there, they map fine that way. But W... so I guess it only bakes between 0 and .999 ? Seems counterintuitive to me, never had a baking problem with various W values.

Mark Dygert

W huh... weird never thought of doing that. I guess that would make changing both pieces slightly easier. That way you don't have to jocky pieces off to the left/right and back again for changes, then back again for rendering Interesting tip I think I'll start using that!

Noren

Eric,
it bakes everything in the uv0-1 box.
But by moving things in w you can influence what will render on top or underneath other geometry.

Eric Chadwick

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks Noren.

Sage

It be nice if they said that in the rtt render to texture tutorials. I have used max for years have never thought of using the other options. You can view the uv from different views, vw, and uw, it's similar to top, side and front view. That's how I understood it in my brain when a friend of mine showed how to easily you can select verts and faces when I was trying to unwrap a set of tank tracks into a straight uv island. To get to the overlapping verts and allow me to scale them sideways in the uv view. Ruz thanks for sharing that tip though. That said what other things can be done with the uv in say vw, or uw space. Max lets you play with that as well.

Alex

CrazyButcher

it would be nice if they actually tell you in the stupid sdk how they interpolate stuff like normals and so on in the scanline renderer so that the "looks correct in renderer, but not in viewport" problem could be solved more easily.

rooster

anyone know why maya doesnt have a w? (far as I know)

Ruz

I had never actually tried it myself until today and i just remember the rep saying it. stuck in the back of my mind somewhere. anyway pleased its of some use.

MoP

That's pretty smart, I'm sure I'd thought of that for stuff like this before now, but I'd never actually tried it ... works perfectly, thanks!

indian_boy

hey yeah. clever.
now how do i do that? is it an option in the UV unwrap panel? [ i use chuggnut's tools]

cool cool.

Sage

Press 1 in the w field on the bottom you'll see inputs for u v and w it looks similar to the inputs above the animation timeline where you can input numbers for xyz for the move, rotate and scale, except the uvw inputs are in the unwrap modifier. I did that and it worked for me for any kind of bake in rtt.

Alex

Ruz

no probs MoP

indian_boy

ah okay. thanks!