Baking dramas!?

Raider

So i'm baking my shotgun down, everything goes fine normal comes out pretty nicely, somethings to fix up in PS but nothing major as you can see.



With AO.




So i went alright i'll do an AO test, and i get this, ignore the black background of it... but it's like the cage just doesn't work on the AO, i've tried everything i can think of to fix this... i can bake the normal map out perfect every time but the AO comes up like this with massive blank sections like the hpoly is cutting through the lowpoly but the cage isn't doing anything yet other sections are fine?

Anyone got any ideas because i'm about to bash my PC

r_fletch_r

It would be wonderfull to know what application you are using.

In max i think the solution is to go into the low polys object properties and turn off cast shadows.

Raider

Oh sorry yer max 2010

Joao Sapiro

seems like your lowpoly is also projecting onto the bake , just select the lowpoly , right click , properties and deselect "cast shadows" that should do it nice shottie !

StefanH

follow this:

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CreatingShadeMaps.html

and you should be fine

Mark Dygert

cool shottie! If what Johny says doesn't work try toggling off renderable in object properties for the low poly.

You can also go down the edit poly of the low, element mode, hide all then click back on projection and bake.

I also think go into the projection modifier > Reference Geometry and under Display Toggle click enable and then click Hide Reference geometry.


The UDN way seems crazy long and convoluted to get to the same result...

Raider

Yep so it's still going on, tried all the advice, i've stepped back to a previous version and done it again. I actually do the method racer says, export the cage then use push modifiers in the cage and import to back into the projection map so i can get the nicest possible cage.

But for some reason it's like the cage isn't working on all the model.. EVEN THOUGH IT'S SET UP RIGHT.. i.e. the picture below. You can see that the cage is pushed out far enough to cover all the rim details however if you look to the right hand side in the middle you see a massive ray miss line like it's not hitting it.. even though it's perfectly set up..

I've tried AO baking via mental ray, tried scanline with a light tracer / skylight, took off cast shadows on lpoly, hid working geometry. The thing which doesn't make sense is this. WHY does the normal map render without any of these errors, yet the AO picks them up WITH THE SAME CAGE.

mbullister

You might have already tried this (I don't have access to Racer's AK tut right now, and don't remember if he mentions it), but sometimes you can fix this by selecting all of your high OR low meshes and offsetting them by a very small amount.

There seems to be an issue in Max's RTT where if the high and low are perfectly coplanar, the bake can miss. You can't see it in the normal map since perfect alignment should be .5, .5, 1 anyways, but it can cause issues with AO or Complete maps.

Raider

Was over max, just exported the lpoly, hpoly and cage out of max put it in xNormal and wala, works fine. Go figure, thx autodesk.

StefanH

the udn one might be long. It uses "Incl./Excl. Object ID" option in the AO material though which might very well solve the problem. And i dont think somebody mentioned that so far.

You might have already tried this (I don't have access to Racer's AK tut right now, and don't remember if he mentions it), but sometimes you can fix this by selecting all of your high OR low meshes and offsetting them by a very small amount.

There seems to be an issue in Max's RTT where if the high and low are perfectly coplanar, the bake can miss. You can't see it in the normal map since perfect alignment should be .5, .5, 1 anyways, but it can cause issues with AO or Complete maps.

Yeah this happened to me alot of times before as well. I apply a push modifier with a tiny amount to the lowpoly in this case so nothing gets shifted.

Raider

I tried the udn method, the last screenshot i took was doing it that way, i tried putting a push modifier on the low poly to offset it a bit and it still penetrated like crazy, but taking all the stuff i had and putting it into xNormal worked fine, so i might just do it that way in future

Reverenddevil

Xnormal is always superior to Max. Less headache.

tesher07

Odd.. just on he topic of xnormal, can anyone tell me why my maps always explode at the end of baking... once it finishes baking in xnormal the maps just stretch outwards...

mbullister

@tesher07

For the same reason that was given to you in the Xnormal master thread. It's padding. It's a good thing.