Need a good Baking technic

madrocker

I'm having problems with baking simple cylinder stuff with extrusions. And I keep getting this wave. How do I fix that. I wany to be able to get a simple straight line on a cylinder piece. My High Poly is on the left low is on the right. Every time I do a cylinder part I keep getting this wave. I highlighted were I get the wave.

ANY SOLUTIONS????:poly127::poly127::poly127:
Something so simple and its pissing me off:poly118:

malcolm

I can't really tell what the problem is can you post a close up screenshot.

chadabees

Post up the normal map too

Piflik

You can fix the wave in PS really fast using the smudge tool or free transform...that being said, you will get the least amount of waves, when the height segments of your cylinder in the lowpoly and its cage are on the same height....that way the rays hit the highpoly perpendicular and not at an angle...

EarthQuake

I dont see any "wave" here really, you just need to up the anti aliasing quality

Mark Dygert

Piflik wrote: »

You can fix the wave in PS really fast using the smudge tool or free transform...that being said, you will get the least amount of waves, when the height segments of your cylinder in the lowpoly and its cage are on the same height....that way the rays hit the highpoly perpendicular and not at an angle...

Don't forget Filter > Liquify.

I agree with EQ, I don't see the common normal map wave you can get when your low poly has less sides than your high poly, just some AA issues. Personally I think the detail being captured should be exaggerated, they seem kind of small and might not hold up well to mip-mapping or down res-ing.

EarthQuake

Yeah, i think its just a case of the edges being too hard in the HP.

kdm3d

That looks like what happens when that edge in your uv's is not perfectly horizontal or vertical. Looks like your getting pixels that are at an angle there where it should be a straight line. What do your uv's look like?

madrocker

Here is another example. A buddy of mine should me the PS way. But i think its just another process of slowing work fLOW

kdm3d

@madrocker. I dont think that is the issue hes having up there... BUT

IF you are using a cage to bake, moving the "cap" portion of your cylinder closer to the mesh will compensate for a little of this. Instead of having the entire cage equadistant from the low poly mesh. adding loops in your LP will help also.

If you understand how the normals are calced during the bake, directions of rays, etc... its easier to see where you have to move the cage to compensate for the distortion.

If you are just using raytrace to calc the rays, PS is the way to go to correct it.

madrocker

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I FOUND THE SOLUTION.

I will set up a tutorial for all of you. All smoothing groups have to match on; High Poly, low poly, and Projection cage.

No more PS

Here are some quick Pic Same modelI think the smoothing groups have to match only on low poly and cage. Not sure high poly has to be the same going to do another model.

CheeseOnToast

This subject has been well-covered, so I wouldn't worry about doing a tutorial. You're not quite there yet with the above method anyway. If both the lowpoly and cage have seperate smoothing groups for the cylinder caps, you'll be getting ray misses. The nice bevel you have on your highpoly will not be replicated properly in your normal map. Earthquake explains it in detail here, and how to do it properly : http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73593

also the polycount wiki has some good tips and links, relating to normal mapping cylinders and the subject in general :

http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap?highlight=%28\bCategoryBumpMap\b%29#Smoothing_Groups_.26_Hard_Edges

malcolm

deleted.