All this talk about AO maps/Cavity maps is fine. But really... it's not anything to get this worked up about.
What it really comes down to, is what type of art direction you are going for imo. If your art director is happy with what you make, and it fits in with the rest of the games art, then what's the problem?
I personally like painting in Gradients/custom AO and overlaying AO with lower opacities and masks.
But if you just can't fucking stand it and think it's the devil, than whatever.
As a studying student, this thread is amazingly informative and helpful. I love it when you guys have big "what to do/what not to do" discussions including pictures for examples. Helps us out a lot.
I personally like painting in Gradients/custom AO and overlaying AO with lower opacities and masks.
But if you just can't fucking stand it and think it's the devil, than whatever.
I hope you don't spend ages unnecessarily doing something that you could have baked (likely with more accuracy) in a couple of minutes, then... or do you like wasting time for no good reason?
All this talk about AO maps/Cavity maps is fine. But really... it's not anything to get this worked up about.
I don't think anyone is getting too worked up. I think discussions like this are good. A lot of people are passionate about what they do for work and hobby
All this talk about AO maps/Cavity maps is fine. But really... it's not anything to get this worked up about.
What it really comes down to, is what type of art direction you are going for imo. If your art director is happy with what you make, and it fits in with the rest of the games art, then what's the problem?
I personally like painting in Gradients/custom AO and overlaying AO with lower opacities and masks.
But if you just can't fucking stand it and think it's the devil, than whatever.
Now back to your regular scheduled bickering..
We had something along this line of discussion here recently among the leads and how ao bakes and the like take away from the artist and puts all the art creation into a machine.
I bake my ao. I'll sometimes paint in some more to enforce some areas but I like the results I get from baking and it's hell of a lot faster then handpainting it and usually a lot more accurate for mechanical / hard surface stuff.
A few people here thought that baking it and painting it by hand takes the same amount of time and the talks got kinda heated for a bit as some people think using baked maps and the like are a crutch and take away from peoples traditional skills. True it's not as creative as say hand painting everything but it's also a huge time saver and in the end when things are compressed down, resized, put into engine and on screen does it really make a huge difference?
I told my guys I want them to bake their stuff. Not hand paint it and I think so far things are going good with it and people are adapting.
Its like painting normals from scratch, sure you can do it, but what is the point? It will never look as good or be as accurate, and many cases it will take much longer. Saying rendered maps take away from the "artistry" is just silly, thats like saying using global illumination to light an environment takes away from the artistry, that you should use 15,000 point lights instead.
The artistic part comes in the actual art creation, the highpoly, being able to accurately represent that high on a low is a highly technical skill, not in the slightest an artistic skill.
People keep saying that when you're not going for a realistic look, just do whatever. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because having a nailed down and consistent baking workflow, that makes sense as to how lighting actually works in the real world is important. I dont care how cartoony your assets are, you still operate on the same basic principals of lighting. Its like anotomy, before you break it and go stylized you need to have a solid understanding of how it works. Shadows do not randomly show up just because you're making a cartoony game, nor do objects randomly not occlude, AO is math, not really subjective. Sure you can tweak the result of the ao, but to make it up entirely is just silly.
Now, specific to this whole "blue channel" thing, this is what it comes down to. If you do not have a proper AO bake and can not bake one for whatever reason, the blue channel can be a nice aid. However if you DO have an accurate AO bake, you simply need to exaggerate your ao if that is the result you need, the blue channel is a poor man's ao, in that it is lacking a whole lot of data you want to use to make a model "pop". There really is no need to use the blue channel, it is inferior when you have proper data just sitting there for you to use.
I don't think it's so much about artistic skill as we have very very experienced artists here that know what they're doing but are accustomed to doing it a different way. They may have a slower pipeline but a pipeline that works for them. Even if it's going in hand by hand and walking every proper normal map blend step ala Project Offset. The issue was brought up when MOP called out KDM3D on adjusting the blue channel of a normal map.
It doesn't matter. What does matter is a pipeline each artist is comfortable with and if it meets the studio's demands for milestones. In my opinion? If they want to do it by hand, that's fine. But there are issues here.
1. Time - Do you have the time to invest into handpainting AO, or cleaning up normal maps vs re-baking?
2. Destructive? - Is what you're doing destructive, can you reuse this to convert cavity maps and edge highlights. Can you use this for other parts of the textures? Detail map, power, spec, etc?
3. Accuracy - With a normal map, accuracy is important to me. Why? Because I can nearly use it for anything, and everything. Do I use crazybump to strengthen normal maps? Yes. Do I use xnormals to bake? Yes, do I use max to base? Yes. It all depends on the time and needed detail. I can use it to create a quick polish AO to add to my diffuse, or overlay another normal map that will help break tilling. Accuracy from a bake, (and rebake if need be) is vital in my workflow. For others? Maybe cleaning up by hand or persuing a certain style is easier. Either way there will be cleaning up to do as no bakes are perfect but it's compensating for the time that's important.
Unfortunately time is money in the industry, i'm learning this the hard way through crunch. But it's no excuse for lazy shortcuts. It's all about what you are comfortable with, time, reusability, and accuracy imho.
Are there any other recommendations for apps or plugins to render curvature maps aside from the script on Tom Cowlands site? MOP, Perna, Earthquake, what do you guys use to create these maps?
The definition of a cavity map seems rather ill defined. Take xNormal for example, the cavity map you can get by processing a normal map is entirely different from the cavity map you get from the baking options which is more akin to an AO map with a low search distance.
Replies
All this talk about AO maps/Cavity maps is fine. But really... it's not anything to get this worked up about.
What it really comes down to, is what type of art direction you are going for imo. If your art director is happy with what you make, and it fits in with the rest of the games art, then what's the problem?
I personally like painting in Gradients/custom AO and overlaying AO with lower opacities and masks.
But if you just can't fucking stand it and think it's the devil, than whatever.
Now back to your regular scheduled bickering..
I hope you don't spend ages unnecessarily doing something that you could have baked (likely with more accuracy) in a couple of minutes, then... or do you like wasting time for no good reason?
I don't think anyone is getting too worked up. I think discussions like this are good. A lot of people are passionate about what they do for work and hobby
We had something along this line of discussion here recently among the leads and how ao bakes and the like take away from the artist and puts all the art creation into a machine.
I bake my ao. I'll sometimes paint in some more to enforce some areas but I like the results I get from baking and it's hell of a lot faster then handpainting it and usually a lot more accurate for mechanical / hard surface stuff.
A few people here thought that baking it and painting it by hand takes the same amount of time and the talks got kinda heated for a bit as some people think using baked maps and the like are a crutch and take away from peoples traditional skills. True it's not as creative as say hand painting everything but it's also a huge time saver and in the end when things are compressed down, resized, put into engine and on screen does it really make a huge difference?
I told my guys I want them to bake their stuff. Not hand paint it and I think so far things are going good with it and people are adapting.
The artistic part comes in the actual art creation, the highpoly, being able to accurately represent that high on a low is a highly technical skill, not in the slightest an artistic skill.
People keep saying that when you're not going for a realistic look, just do whatever. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because having a nailed down and consistent baking workflow, that makes sense as to how lighting actually works in the real world is important. I dont care how cartoony your assets are, you still operate on the same basic principals of lighting. Its like anotomy, before you break it and go stylized you need to have a solid understanding of how it works. Shadows do not randomly show up just because you're making a cartoony game, nor do objects randomly not occlude, AO is math, not really subjective. Sure you can tweak the result of the ao, but to make it up entirely is just silly.
Now, specific to this whole "blue channel" thing, this is what it comes down to. If you do not have a proper AO bake and can not bake one for whatever reason, the blue channel can be a nice aid. However if you DO have an accurate AO bake, you simply need to exaggerate your ao if that is the result you need, the blue channel is a poor man's ao, in that it is lacking a whole lot of data you want to use to make a model "pop". There really is no need to use the blue channel, it is inferior when you have proper data just sitting there for you to use.
It doesn't matter. What does matter is a pipeline each artist is comfortable with and if it meets the studio's demands for milestones. In my opinion? If they want to do it by hand, that's fine. But there are issues here.
1. Time - Do you have the time to invest into handpainting AO, or cleaning up normal maps vs re-baking?
2. Destructive? - Is what you're doing destructive, can you reuse this to convert cavity maps and edge highlights. Can you use this for other parts of the textures? Detail map, power, spec, etc?
3. Accuracy - With a normal map, accuracy is important to me. Why? Because I can nearly use it for anything, and everything. Do I use crazybump to strengthen normal maps? Yes. Do I use xnormals to bake? Yes, do I use max to base? Yes. It all depends on the time and needed detail. I can use it to create a quick polish AO to add to my diffuse, or overlay another normal map that will help break tilling. Accuracy from a bake, (and rebake if need be) is vital in my workflow. For others? Maybe cleaning up by hand or persuing a certain style is easier. Either way there will be cleaning up to do as no bakes are perfect but it's compensating for the time that's important.
Unfortunately time is money in the industry, i'm learning this the hard way through crunch. But it's no excuse for lazy shortcuts. It's all about what you are comfortable with, time, reusability, and accuracy imho.
The definition of a cavity map seems rather ill defined. Take xNormal for example, the cavity map you can get by processing a normal map is entirely different from the cavity map you get from the baking options which is more akin to an AO map with a low search distance.