Max, baking bump maps applied to the high?

Mark Dygert

A few times I have applied a simple surface bump to my high poly geometry, like a scratch tile, or a procedural dent map or a marble surface tile and been happy with the results, but unable to bake that material surface detail down to the low.

I'm pretty sure max RTT can't do what I'm asking unless there is something I'm missing... I'll post the work around's that I use and hopefully you guys can point out any faster ways,

1) Combine the geometry bake with the added surface detail using photoshop.
It always ends up being a little hacked together rotating and moving pieces around. I have to worry about surface detail tiling properly across seams. It takes longer than I'd like.

2) Convert the surface detail map to a B/W image, apply that to the low poly using a 2nd UV channel that is created using a simple planar map. Bake a diffuse to my 1st UV channel, use photoshop/xnormal/various plug-ins to convert it to a normal map and combine that with the geometry bake.

3) Take my high poly detail into a sculpting app, go up an insanely high amount of sub-divisions and paint in the surface details and bake this out.

All three have been quite a bit of leg work, when it seems like I should be able to slap a map on my high and have it included in the bake.

Is there a simple setting I'm missing that will include the surface materials applied to the high? I can bake a diffuse map but a normal is based off the geometry only?

Are there easier ways to do this?

EarthQuake

Really there should be a way to just "do" this with RTT, I though max supported baking bump on a high as normal....

Well a quick way would be, apply your B/W bump map as a diffuse on the high, bake that down as a diffuse, then convert to normal and add to your baked normal, this way atleast it would like up correctly and everything, no worrying about uvs etc. Also, you'd be able to easily tweak in in PS as its own layer, so probably a more robust solution anyway.

Mark Dygert

I like that better than my #2, it makes sense to keep it on the high and just swap a few maps around when baking/re-baking.

Thank EQ! Helpful as always!

And if anyone knows how RTT can bake bumps applied to high poly meshes, I'm all eyes! I really really hope I'm just missing a simple checkbox or work flow.

SpeCter

I don´t get it, i made a little test, just a plane with a bumpmap applied copied the plane, added a projection modifier.Render2Texture -> Normal Map and the bump map was rendered in the normal map output...

Here is a screen of my little test, just one bevel+ bumpmap(just prcedural noise)


Maybe i´m confused, but that is what you want right?

r_fletch_r

Works for me here. Just double checked it, I baked a dent map from 1 mesh to another and it worked fine.

Mark Dygert

SpeCter, fletch, that is exactly what I want, but this is what I get.



Thinking it might be a scanline issue, I switched over to Mental Ray and managed to get AO that included it, but the normal map came out blank every time.

I tried it out on a few machines at work and it worked on a really old machine we use as a render farm server node, but didn't work on a box that is identical to mine. I also logged into my home machine and it worked there too, never tried it at home before, always just worked around it.

I checked for video card driver updates, they didn't help.
So I uninstalled 3dsmax, cleared out every corner I could, reinstalled it clean, no scripts or plug-ins and tried it, no dice.

Talking to our IT guy he suggested that I turn off Ultra-Mon and any and all other software, aside from UM there wasn't much to disable, but I did it. No dice.

I am sending in a support request to autodesk. Hopefully they can figure it out before I pitch he box in the river.

r_fletch_r

Just an idea but have you tried using bitmaps rather than procedurals?
We had some odd bugs with procedurals going crazy on a couple of machines in my last job.

SpeCter

Hm... i only tested ot with procedurals, but like i said, no problems :-/
Maybe i did something out of habit.I will do a test again and send you the max file if you want.

Here you go:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1114083/test_bake.max

Mark Dygert

Thanks for the suggestions guys! I tried the scene and it didn't work, only thing it captured was AO if I baked with MR.

BUT I got a response back from Autodesk and it works!
They had me do a clean install but on their list was to remove BackBurner (I didn't do that previously) and the 32bit version of max (which I didn't do previously) along with all the 3dsmax folder/files from local data and the 3dsmax root folder (which I had already done once, but I did it again). After reinstalling BB and Max everything is working as expected.

Occasionally in the past (about 1 out of 500 frames) my machine when acting as a server node, would drop the textures from one or two frames in a series (same with the identical machine). We've always just re-rendered those single frames and moved on, but I wonder if this fixed that issue too...

r_fletch_r

Mark Dygert wrote: »

Occasionally in the past (about 1 out of 500 frames) my machine when acting as a server node, would drop the textures from one or two frames in a series (same with the identical machine). We've always just re-rendered those single frames and moved on, but I wonder if this fixed that issue too...

that could also be lack of RAM. got that a lot with maya/mentalray. I'd render a shot and all but 2 or 3 frames had random missing textures. Turned out the nightly backup jobs were using a shit ton of ram and causing the render to glitch