Ambient Occlusion Maps

Nemecys

Okay so ive recently decided to do myself a small project in effort to learn how to vastly increase my knowledge of production pipeline

So far ive made a high poly and low poly version of this model i made and finally rendered out a normal map in max

now im coming to the point that a nice ambient Occlusion map would be useful

the high poly model is so high that it indeed causes 3DS Max to crash everytime i tried using polycruncher that failed and now im trying Xnormal

On the high poly mesh do i need to have in the obj file a plane for the floor and a skylight already saved in there and how do i get it to understand how my UV's are mapped on the low poly?

glib

If you rendered out a normal map already then the occlusion isn't too different a process.

Either select mental ray as your renderer and choose ambient occlusion instead of 'normal' map in the add map section of render to texture, or create a skylight, choose scanline render, and 'lightings map'.

As for your question about objs, I assume you're talking about going to xnormal.

Yes a ground plane is often a good idea, make it part of your high poly export. No you don't need a skylight. The baker understands your low poly's UVs because it's baking TO that object; the same way it understands them when you make a normal map.

Lamont

Nemecys wrote: »

the high poly model is so high that it indeed causes 3DS Max to crash everytime i tried using polycruncher that failed and now im trying Xnormal

I've put in 10 million poly OBJ's through xNormal. Export an OBJ.

Nemecys wrote: »

On the high poly mesh do i need to have in the obj file a plane for the floor and a skylight already saved in there and how do i get it to understand how my UV's are mapped on the low poly?

No need for skylight, it's gonna take care of that for you. Export the high and low OBJ's feed it into xNormal, click the options that you want (what maps to save out). Make sure that the ray front and rear settings are ok and hit the bake button. Easy as eating a pie.

And:

http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=41776

Nemecys

Cheers for the help there guys i got it all to work in the end thanks its come out.. alright... not as id hoped but that was my poorly planned UV mapping making it very difficult to texture

Oh well Trial and Error, i have to say fair play to the texturers out there its a hard job especialyl with some poor uvs