3ds Max: Baking other maps.

Incomitatum

I have made some assets in Max some time ago. They are mostly modular, but at the time I weleded them together, they have no back faces, and I had no concept of keeping things "on the grid" for UDK.

Now I find myself rebuilding them. Most of their old asset's textures come from 512x512 maps that are box projected onto them. As such I don't want to have these modular block need to use multiple Material IDs'.

I'd like to lay all the UV's for these new modular parts on one large UV map (probably 2048 ). Then bake the old maps to it. Saving me the hassle of having to pinch, pull, and crop things in Photoshop; hoping they line up right.

As such, I am considering baking down the diffuse, spec, and normal maps. Will this work well?

Most of the normals are in the texture. Rather than having to hand place pieces and parts in photoshop if it transpose my maps that would be great. I'd like it to bake the normal from the normal texture, and not from the geometry (as well as the Diffuse and Spec).

I have been goggling, to no avail. Do I need to create separate "projection" geometry, or can I have this all dump into the 2nd UV channel.

Just a bump in the right direction would be nice. Has anyone else done this?

SpeCter

Not sure how good it bakes, but you will need the model with you old UV´s and one with the new ones, apply a projection modifier, apply the map you want to transfer to the diffuse slot and bake out.
But you have to render it with 100% Self-Illumination, otherwise new lighting information will be baked within, which is not what you want obviously.

Incomitatum

See, -that's- why I asked. Something so little like that would have eluded me and ticked me off.

Do you know about the normal maps? If the geometry is fairly flat, will it encode the NEW maps strictly from the texture info, or will it read as FLAT? :S

SpeCter

you have to apply the normal map as diffuse too i think.You can try to bake it as a normalmap but i imagine it reading the data from the meshes normals.

sinistergfx

SpeCter wrote: »

you have to apply the normal map as diffuse too i think.You can try to bake it as a normalmap but i imagine it reading the data from the meshes normals.

No. Bake normals as normals. When you bake, it is baking whatever the normals are at render time, that includes any sort of normal/bump info.

EarthQuake

Right, bake normals as normals. Normals need to be baked as normal, because normals are relatve to uv space and mesh normals. So if your mesh normals change, or if your uvs are rotated, baking just the texture information will not work.

Apply diffuse as diffuse and bake a diffuse map(no need to worry about lighting)
Apply spec as diffuse and bake another diffuse map
Apply any other other maps(gloss, glow) as diffuse and bake as diffuse.

SpeCter

Ok i didn´t know about normals, but when EQ says so, there can be no mistake
I forgot about what EQ mentioned, that it will not work because they are relative to uv space.

But are you sure about baking diffuse as diffuse with not worrying about lighting?
Each time i rendered out my maps they contained lighting and information if i didn´t self illuminate them.

Incomitatum

Thank you all so much. This is going to save me a ton of time.

EarthQuake

SpeCter wrote: »

Ok i didn´t know about normals, but when EQ says so, there can be no mistake
I forgot about what EQ mentioned, that it will not work because they are relative to uv space.

But are you sure about baking diffuse as diffuse with not worrying about lighting?
Each time i rendered out my maps they contained lighting and information if i didn´t self illuminate them.

There is a specific map "color" or "diffuse" map type to bake in max, i cant remember what it is called, that will not bake any lighting info, just diffuse info. Remember that the baking preview in max is always a lit preview, not a preview of the actual map you're rendering.

SpeCter

I wasn´t talking about the preview. But if you are right, he can render them out right of the bat and if i´m right, he knows the solution.
I just mentioned it, because i stumbled across this problem some time ago(Maybe i was so stupid and ticked lighting on in the options xD )

cw

EarthQuake wrote: »

There is a specific map "color" or "diffuse" map type to bake in max, i cant remember what it is called, that will not bake any lighting info, just diffuse info. Remember that the baking preview in max is always a lit preview, not a preview of the actual map you're rendering.

This is 100% correct, diffuse map will be the diffuse colour of the pixel, nothing more. 'Complete map' is the equivalent of the preview rendered frame buffer which is sometimes visible when you bake. Diffuse bake should not have lighting info in it when baking, so you can save that step with the self illumination.

Mark Dygert

When baking diffuse to diffuse, remember to shut off AA and Global Super Sampling otherwise it's going to blur things. If you turn both those things off you get a pixel prefect transfer (aside from any rescaling problems you introduce). You also don't need to project as that could cause some distrotion but bake from one channel to another.

Basically you create a second UV channel, rearrange your UV's, set your materials to use the first UV layout, and in RTT define the 2nd channel as your output. It will transfer your tiles to your unique layout. Afterward you can load/save/delete the extra UV channels you don't need.


I wrote up a mini-tutorial on this a while back.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=58411

SpeCter

Wicked, didn´t know about that, very nice indeed, nice Mark!

Incomitatum

I can't thank you all enough. I know there are some that get miffed at me, who think I should "try and fail" to learn; but I would rather seek the wisdom of those who have gone before me. All your insights are appreciated; the fact that Vig has something to say on the matter shows that all this is viable.

Nostromo

Hey Incomitatum, This is an very old thread but since i was googling and found this today, i decided that this should be good as any to make my first "official" post.

So What i've learned to do is this...

(oddly inverse of what people above have done, but basically the same)
(Existing objects)

Tonight i successfully Projection mapped a Diffuse map from a higher poly object to a low poly

(for new objects)
How to Compile Multiple Maps Onto one Diffuse Map

---

the objective of this instruction set is to compile all the maps onto one texture

ie: you have a object with 3 different materials (3 seperate 1024's textures), You want to composite all the materials down to a single 1024 or whatever size)


1. Complete your model, Using as many sub-material or individual materials as you wish, doesn't really matter... (so it's ready to go)
(note: the object must be one single object; but can have multiple sub-Object elements)

2. Unwrap UVW > Set to channel 2 > UV all the objects

3. collapse the modifier (i do, you don't have too, I have keyboard shortcuts and im click happy>_<)

5. Render-to-texture

Create Diffuse map

Mapping Cords > existing channel > Channel 2

Render map

6. After the map is rendered,
a.Re-Add a Unwrap UVW modifier
b.Select Channel 2
c. reset UVW's (older-2011) (might be up to 2012? i dunno
d. change the channel to channel one (moving chan 2 data to channel 1)

7. Collapse modifer

8. Apply your Diffuse baked map to the object, and go forward =3
-Done