I lost my sunglasses on top of my head

FikusOmongus

In other words i think im missing the obvious...

Ive been reading over some of the normal map tuts suggested in my project thread (Poop's and Andrei's), and after looking them both over and comparing the information, i decided to do some test bakes to see if i can wrap my brain around it all.

So:

- The low is unwrapped, is all one smoothing group, UV's are offset, and map channel is 1.
- High was cloned before adding detail and sits in the same space as the low. ( The Low had been unwrapped first, but i reset the high poly version's unwrap back so it sits inside the UV square again )
- cage was snapped to the high and then pushed till it sits just outside the high with no intersections.

and here are my Render to tex settings:


Problem is i get a black map. Nothing.

So what obvious setting or step did i miss?

Id so like to understand MAX's Render to texture before i even consider something like xNormal or the like.

Rawr!

Ape.of.Gods

Had the same problem when I tried; the only thing that worked was switching it to mental ray, but then its using mental ray and I wanted to try the default max renderer. But try that if you don't care what renderer is being used.

FikusOmongus

No dice, i switched it to Mental Ray and got the same result.

Jesse Moody

did you put a skylight in the scene?
turn on light tracer?

FikusOmongus

yes and yes

Ghostscape

"- The low is unwrapped, is all one smoothing group, UV's are offset, and map channel is 1."

Do you have any UVs in the 0-1 window? If not, that will result in black.

Also, you say you snapped the projection cage to the HIGH poly and then pushed out?

The projection modifier needs to be on the low poly, and needs to have the high poly added to the list of objects in the projection modifier. If you have the projection modifier on the wrong one, or do not have any objects added to the projection modifier's objects list, it will render black.

Your settings look fine, I am almost positive that the problem exists outside of the RTT windows.

FikusOmongus

The unwrap for the low poly was offset in U by 1, from the default UV square, which im guessing is the 0-1 space.

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"Also, you say you snapped the projection cage to the HIGH poly and then pushed out?"

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What i meant to say is the cage was snapped to the LOW and then pushed out my bad.

The high poly is in fact added in the projection list.

hmmm...

Jesse Moody

you need the uvs in the 0-1 window and anything that overlays would cause errors out of the 0-1 window.

i bet thats the deal.

FikusOmongus

rofl... it was user error.

I misinterpreted the whole "offset the UV's by 1" thing.
I went back and reread the tuts and realized they were refering to overlapping UV's or UV's that you dont want as part of the normal map, not the whole damn thing.

Well, at least that embarassment is out of the way. Moving on!

Thanks JesseMoody