Help with baking and normal map ?

NAIMA

Hello , first of all I am not a pro , just an amateurish modder that wants to learn , that said here is my problem , I hope I am allowed to post here even if its a pro maker forum here .....

the problem I have is 1 with baking texture of themodel ambient occlusion here is the problem I get , the ao map is coming along but it presents some artefacts I dont understand where they came from , and I cant see anything bad in the mesh ....



the second problem is about xnormal , I put the high res and the low res models , I set avarage normals etc but the thing I get its a sort of spiky bad normal map , what can be the cause of that?



I hope to not bother you with my nooby questions but I also hope to get many answers ...

killingpeople

first off, don't worry about posting your questions, this isn't a pro only forum, so don't worry about that man.

regarding your AO bake, i'm not entirely sure what your problem is but looking at the image you've posted, i'm willing to bet it's your padding, i'll use 32 for a 1024. also, i'm seeing you're baking a complete map, you'll want to select light map. third, i'm not sure what you're going for, but if you're attempting to bake an ao to a low poly model from a high poly, you'll want to use the projection cage on the low, that will transfer the surface data from your highpoly there.

for xnormal, i can't tell, but i'm guessing it's your ray distance setting for the low mesh, look around for it, default is 0.5 last i checked. bump that up to like 5.

see if that works and if you're still having problems, post the results and someone should be able to help you out further.

edit: and that's a terrible way to unwrap the tips of the crown, you'll want to unwrap it much like unwrapping a tootsie roll wrapper.

jogshy

For that complex and organic object you'll need to setup a cage. The uniform(constant) ray distances method should be used only for very simple models like spheres, boxes, walls, etc...

Soo... try to setup a cage and sure it covers completely the highpoly model... and sure also you set the "Use cage" option in the corresponding lowpoly mesh's slot or the cage won't be used.

Shinsen

IM not an expert in normal map baking , but your mesh could be a problem. There are almost only polygons with 5+ edges...How did you model that?

NAIMA

Thankyouf for ur answers , I discovered that most of my problems where coming from the shell modifier I applied and collpsed unwisely befoure applying the ao and normals , tough I agree that even without it I wouldnt get the inside mesh AO ....I am doing this to put this model in fallout game mod here a picture :



I am not expert but I have will to learn do you know where I can find this cage tutorial for baking AO on complex shapes?
Also how could I have unwrapped the tips of the head ? I didnt understand that ... also about Normals is it always ok to use xnormal ? I got also weird artifacts on the interior or on the body model I am using in another place ingame I gt weird artifacts on the book of the statue when there is nothing projecting any shadow on it ..... and what is padding? ....

sorry If I may look too noob ...

killingpeople

i made all the terms in blue and quotations up.

click

Neox

Shinsen wrote: »

IM not an expert in normal map baking , but your mesh could be a problem. There are almost only polygons with 5+ edges...How did you model that?

that shouldn't be aproblem as long as the shading looks good the normal will loke the same, so if you have shading errors get rid of them otherwise it doesn't matter

NAIMA

Thanks for all the answers , the model I got from a premade thing that I heavily optimized and the result is bad topology but since its just for a test I didnt care much , as for the cage , where can I get a tutorial on that?

jogshy

and what is padding? ....

A thing to prevent problems with normal maps and mipmapping. It dilates the UV islands's edges. The number of pixels you should use is:

log2(max(texture.width,texture.height)) + 1

So, for a 2048x2048 texture it should be almost 13 pixels.

About the artifacts, they look caused by an incorrect ray distance. Try to setup a cage.