UV edges showing thru in Height Map?

Junkie_XL

Just curious if anyone has come across this problem? Adjusted levels so the lines can be more seen... Happens with both scanline and MR. I've tried applying a 0% opacity to my low poly mesh, tried hiding the faces...

No fix yet...

MoP

Uhh, think about it, it's a height map, it's meant to look like that!

You're rendering a projection of a highpoly mesh onto a low poly mesh. The aim of the height map is to store the difference in "height" between the surfaces. Obviously since your lowpoly surface come closer to the highpoly at various parts (especially noticeable on more cylindrical shapes, since the surfaces distances are never consistent), you will see this effect.

It's not the "UV edges", it's just the actual difference in height between the geometry.

If you apply this image as a displacement map in a renderer, you will see it comes out looking like the highpoly source, since it's basically pushing out the geometry locally along its normals by the value stored in the map.

Junkie_XL

MoP wrote: »

Uhh, think about it, it's a height map, it's meant to look like that!

You're rendering a projection of a highpoly mesh onto a low poly mesh. The aim of the height map is to store the difference in "height" between the surfaces. Obviously since your lowpoly surface come closer to the highpoly at various parts (especially noticeable on more cylindrical shapes, since the surfaces distances are never consistent), you will see this effect.

It's not the "UV edges", it's just the actual difference in height between the geometry.

If you apply this image as a displacement map in a renderer, you will see it comes out looking like the highpoly source, since it's basically pushing out the geometry locally along its normals by the value stored in the map.

Actually I was just hoping to use it as an overlay or color dodge for a bit more punch in specular. That ugly pattern of lines and bright triangles makes it useless though.

I've rendered these before and I don't seem to recall it being a problem. But maybe I'm not recalling it like I remember. I guess I never really understood that the height map was just meant to be displaying the difference between the low poly cage and the high poly cage. Just thought it was a different method of rendering grayscale pits and peaks. Like cavity maps, etc...

Just experimenting with blending modes in PS is all... It looks good except for the lines.

glib

Try some of the cavity maps that xnormal will generate from your normals:
about halfway down this page
http://donaldphan.com/tutorials/xnormal/xnormal_occ.html

Junkie_XL

glib wrote: »

Try some of the cavity maps that xnormal will generate from your normals:
about halfway down this page
http://donaldphan.com/tutorials/xnormal/xnormal_occ.html

I'll give this a shot but the Cavity Map really doesn't have what the height map has. Cavity looks like it only moves between two colors, gray and white. The Height Map transitions between three...black, gray and white.

Thanks for the suggestion regardless. Any kind of alternative might work out well enough...

Jason Young

You can adjust the cavity map settings to get something closer to that, more of a gradient. You could also try crazybump... I believe the displacement map part of crazybump will get you there.

Also, if you're just using it as an overlay, you could try meshsmoothing the low poly and using that to bake it.

MoP

Yeah, Crazybump is the thing for this. Occlusion tab, fiddle with settings, instant excellence!

Valandar

Another option is to bake your height map from a turbosmoothed lowpoly

Junkie_XL

Amazing how much the crazybump trick pulls that off. Still need to go through the edges by hand but that is quite amazing.

I attempted the turbosmooth down the stack but it reset my cage. Then when pushing all the new verts out it locked up. Fun & sweet all in one package.

I think CB will workout. Thanks guys.