Brick Wall Normal Mapping
polycounter lvl 11
You guys on this forum are probably getting sick of people asking about normal maps by now. But I'm still getting a bit stuck on the brick wall work flow.
So I've been looking at these on making modular brick walls:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=924231#post924231
Very good, but I find I still have some questions.
-how many polys per brick do you guys use generally? I'm finding it hard going with 30k bricks. The above steps use 8x bricks. I don't seem to get much detail on them in z-brush (but is that just me, or do i need more res than 30k a brick?) and then when I bring them back into maya everything seems extremely slow.
-I'm instancing all 8 of them once to make a tiled patern.
-Then I'm trying to use Lighting/Shading- Transfer maps to bake my normal map. Is this what most people would use? I'm unsure as I seem to mostly come across 3dmax threads.
- While I'm doing it I'm trying to bake AO maps too. What settings do people use now on average when doing this? Eg. Occlusion rays. Max dist. Mental ray settings.
So I've been looking at these on making modular brick walls:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=924231#post924231
Very good, but I find I still have some questions.
-how many polys per brick do you guys use generally? I'm finding it hard going with 30k bricks. The above steps use 8x bricks. I don't seem to get much detail on them in z-brush (but is that just me, or do i need more res than 30k a brick?) and then when I bring them back into maya everything seems extremely slow.
-I'm instancing all 8 of them once to make a tiled patern.
-Then I'm trying to use Lighting/Shading- Transfer maps to bake my normal map. Is this what most people would use? I'm unsure as I seem to mostly come across 3dmax threads.
- While I'm doing it I'm trying to bake AO maps too. What settings do people use now on average when doing this? Eg. Occlusion rays. Max dist. Mental ray settings.
Replies
I`m a max user, so I can`t speak to maya`s baking, but compared to max - xnormal is a significantly easier, less headaches and always gives what I consider reliable results first time around.
You can bake your normal maps, and create the AO maps (as well as others) in xnomral. And at least on my machine, the poly count can be as high as what I can export out of zbrush. For the settings I use a cage, and stick with the default ones (in xnormal).
Sorry that doesn`t help with any of your maya settings/questions, but food for thought.
I think thats part of my problem though. Seems theres so many ways of doing normal mapping. I'm just trying to nail down the work flow most commonly used in games today. Or maybe just trying to find the one that makes the most sense! :OS