Manually editing cages (Maya 2009)

Isaiah Sherman

I recently posted some issues I had with baking normal maps and figured out how to use (I know, sad) and edit cages within Maya 2009.

How much freedom is there in editing a cage, though? Is it okay to start adding edge loops and adjusting them to really get picky with where you want your rays to search? I saw you can manually move faces, edges, and verts of a cage to encapsulate all the little deatils of the highpoly, but I don't know about adding edges and moving those new edges/verts.

I tried using the search function so I didn't have to post another thread, but I wasn't able to see what I wanted after about 2 pages of articles.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Schultzie

Its been awhile since I've done it but I believe you can add edge loops, etc. to the cage object and it shouldn't cause any issues when you bake out your maps.

Isaiah Sherman

Is it okay if I add and then move them? I know you can add edgeloops to a mesh after it has been unwrapped, but you cannot move them after you add them because it will warp your textures.

Are cages the same or can they be treated differently?

Schultzie

You can modify the cage object to suit your needs and it won't affect the texturing on your object so moving around edge loops, faces, verts, etc. should be ok. BTW, if you are using Maya's bonus tools there's a script called preserve uv's that will allow you to do simple edits to your object while it keeps the uv's in place.

Isaiah Sherman

Alrighty. Thanks a lot of the help Schultzie

I'll be sure to research the bonus tool too.

Schultzie

Under Maya's help menu there's an option to install the bonus tools from The Area.

Cheesestraws

Actually as we are talking about 2009 there is no need to install the Bonus Tools, you can turn preserve uvs on for the move/rotate/scale tools in their settings or in the w/e/r marking menus.

Isaiah Sherman

I can confirm that! Just hold W, E, or R and hold L-Click and it will bring up a menu where "Preserve UVs" is available. I will have to try this out!