New model need some crit please ^^

Krisonrik

I created this model last week. I have a question for all the pros out there. In my case, this model has the body and the armor modeled separately. I was wondering, when you UV the armor part, do you combine all the small meshes into one or have multiple texture maps is ok? In my case, I combined all the armor pieces and cape together but kind of ran into a bit trouble when using zbrush polypaint. The cape was over the backside so I can't effectively paint the backside of the armor. Please give me some suggestions.


color
normal

spec

color

normal
Sorry I posted on the wrong section, can Mod please move it to crit section?

Smithy

I may be completely off-kilter here but do you mean to be using worldspace normal maps? Most engines use tangent-space maps to perform realtime per-pixel normal lighting.

Your specular map is also very uniformly bright white, causing your model to be completely spec'd out in areas. It's like he's standing next to an atom bomb test.

I would try and avoid the noise+motionblur overlay you have on the armor color and spec, the interaction between the two probably won't result in the brushed metal effect I assume you're shooting for.

Krisonrik

[ QUOTE ]
I may be completely off-kilter here but do you mean to be using worldspace normal maps? Most engines use tangent-space maps to perform realtime per-pixel normal lighting.

Your specular map is also very uniformly bright white, causing your model to be completely spec'd out in areas. It's like he's standing next to an atom bomb test.

I would try and avoid the noise+motionblur overlay you have on the armor color and spec, the interaction between the two probably won't result in the brushed metal effect I assume you're shooting for.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess it is the world space, from zbrush I chosed "normal" instead of tangent. The thing about tangent normal is that when I apply it to the low poly version in maya, it seems everything is broken up. Apply tangent normal is more like a bump map, and the hard edges are still somewhat visible even with the normal set to soft edge. Maybe I missed something while trying to make normal map in zmapper. Anyone can give me some tips?

Daz

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone can give me some tips?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you post an example of your new normal maps, folks will be able to tell just by looking at them (as you will in time) whether or not they are tangent or object space.

As for 'everything is broken up', we can only wildly speculate as to what you might possibly mean by that. Figuring out your issue right now would pretty much require a psychic on our end. Do what fogmann suggested in your other thread, since that's a pretty standard way of checking out your normal maps. Actually rendering them really is usually not. Apply the maps as tangent space bump maps in maya, turn on high quality viewport rendering and throw a light around in the scene. If things look right, they probably are, If they don't, they're not. Try inverting the green channel of the normal map in photoshop If the shading looks strange.

Krisonrik

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Anyone can give me some tips?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you post an example of your new normal maps, folks will be able to tell just by looking at them (as you will in time) whether or not they are tangent or object space.

As for 'everything is broken up', we can only wildly speculate as to what you might possibly mean by that. Figuring out your issue right now would pretty much require a psychic on our end. Do what fogmann suggested in your other thread, since that's a pretty standard way of checking out your normal maps. Actually rendering them really is usually not. Apply the maps as tangent space bump maps in maya, turn on high quality viewport rendering and throw a light around in the scene. If things look right, they probably are, If they don't, they're not. Try inverting the green channel of the normal map in photoshop If the shading looks strange.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks Daz for your advice and everyone who replied to my post. Here is the new normal map that I created as tangent normal.
And for the broken up comment here is the problem.

I didn't mean to make you guys about what I said, for that I am sorry. Also, can anyone give me an idea about the UV question I had? Do pros combine all the armor pieces that are models separately into 1 UV map (by using combine function in maya) or do they give them separate UV and separate texture files? The thing is I use poly paint in zbrush for a less distorted texture map result so when I do the textures, the the armor piece that have over laps in space become problem areas. For example, the cape overlap with the backside of the armor makes. It's hard to select these face in z-brush. Can anyone give shad some light on this matter for me?

Daz

My guess is the problems are coming from your high polygon source model.

Krisonrik

Thanks Daz for the reply. Now if I post a picture of my high poly model, would the problem be clear to you? or do I have other methods to check what's wrong?

Daz

Maybe, maybe not. But its worth a shot eh?

fogmann

To me it looks like you're using anisotropic shader, and with that shader you get the seams on spec where your UV seams are, regardless of whether you have visible seams on the texture or not. Try different shader and see how it looks (Phong should work). Also, it looks like you have no sculpted detail on your high poly, only the decorations, as most of your normal map is blue, and the result you got with ZBrush would look very much like what you would get if you used crazyBump or nVidia filter in PS. So since you don't have much normal information in your normal map, I think it's possibly that your low poly normals are affecting the final shaded look of your character, whereas if you had sculpted detail and defined form on your high poly, then the normal map would take care of the shading. Try applying the flat normal map (H:240 S:50 B:100) texture and see if you get the same broken up look that you outlined in your screenshot.

Krisonrik

Hmm, thanks for the replies... got a little confused over fogmann's suggestion. I don't quite understand how does amount of detail in high poly mesh effect the end result of the normal map? I mean if there is an error, then it should occur regardless of the amount of the detail that I have right?
Here are some shots of the high poly mesh.

fogmann

Sorry for being unclear, I didn't mean to imply that the amount of detail in high poly will make a difference, just the amount of sampled normals that you get on the normal map, in other words, how colorful your map is. Here's the example:


If you look at the example B - the low poly model that has mostly flat blue normal map, you can see in the shaded snapshot the actual low poly normals, especially in the area where specular highlight is, because that normal map is flat and only has the deco element added using the nVidia filter - which is what your normal maps look like. Since the normal is flat, then the shading engine needs to somehow shade the model and it takes into account the normals of the low poly. The sampled normal map shown under A has the strange, colorful shading because the sampling process took into account low poly normals so that when the normal map is applied, it looks nice and smooth, just like high poly model.

So what I'm saying is that your normals aren't sampled correctly. Looks like you sampled them onto a higher poly mesh and then applied them to low poly, so that the normal information that would be sampled as difference between low and high poly normal is not present on your map, and hence it looks flat, lacking that colorful detail and resulting in strange shading. Does that make any sense?

Try baking your normals in Maya or xNormal and see if that will produce better normal map.

Ruz

fogmann, in max the vertex shading from the low poly object still displays, making the object look poor even with a 'colourful' normal map.
The only way around it seems to be to add more polys to make the low poly version 'vertex shade' better

Krisonrik

Thanks for the informative reply frogmann. When you say I didn't sample correctly, could that be that I set the sample value too high in the zMapper?

fogmann

Ruz - I think Krisonrik is using Maya for this, and I'd say unless the angle between the faces is really sharp, the 'colorful' normal map sampled with smoothed edges usually looks okay on low normal mapped geo - that example was snapped from Maya viewport. But it's always a good idea to check this in final rendering platform and make adjustments accordingly.

Krisonrik - I think sample value would have to do with quality, or how precisely your normal map is created (don't have ZMapper here so I can't check what it does). But looking back at your poly model, I can see that some areas have very high poly density, which is perhaps the reason why you didn't get that 'colorful' normal map. I would suggest you to revise your low poly and make the poly distribution reasonable - e.g. the belt, knee pads and elbow deco have way too many polygons. Using Zmapper to bake your normals is convenient and fast when you do it on your lowest subD level, but don't forget that you still have the option of importing mesh with different topology (more appropriate for game) and transfer your normal map to it.

As for the problem that you outlined in red, if the test with flat normal map doesn't produce the errors you get, then the errors are coming from your normal map, and most likely you can paint them out in Photoshop. From what I can see on the top of the collar, you have some row of small lines that show up there and on your normal map, and that should be easy to paint out. And as I said before, the strange specular highlight problem came from anisotropic shader, so unless you're super careful that your UVs are laid with minimum of seams and in the same direction, then you'll have those issues.

Hope it helped, good luck.

Krisonrik

Thank you frogmann, you are so kind to keep coming back for more suggestion to help me out. I will try to reduce the poly count on the areas you mentioned. The knee cap however I would like to keep that round outer edge. How would I be able to achieve that without using too many polygons? Also I tried out the mental ray trick and it seems worked like a charm. But there are new issues... somehow there are massive back triangles all over the place... and I have no clue what they are. I will try to post a screen of that tommorrow.
Thanks again for your help, you are very kind.