renderhjs' textools are quite excellent and usefull, allowing quick ways and customizable settings to bake some quality maps and have it automatically copied to your clipboard for Photoshop. Uses both Lightracer and Mental Ray.
I was about to recommend Blender AO too, particularly Approximate AO. It's quicker than physical AO and noiseless, which makes it a pretty nice fit in a low poly texture pipeline, although you do lose a bit of control.
I used it a lot on a low poly recreation of Shanghai Expo recently, was definitely nice to be able to chuck out these clean AO bakes quite fast, since I was doing a huge amount of assets in a short amount of time.
Most definately, plus i find that its AO is fast as hell...
even on a 1.2million poly model and baking to a lower res, took my amd 940quad about 3mins max i think...
I also find its normal map produces really well, and fast again. I also love the ease of UV layout use within Blender vs say max etc.
I was about to recommend Blender AO too, particularly Approximate AO. It's quicker than physical AO and noiseless, which makes it a pretty nice fit in a low poly texture pipeline, although you do lose a bit of control.
I used it a lot on a low poly recreation of Shanghai Expo recently, was definitely nice to be able to chuck out these clean AO bakes quite fast, since I was doing a huge amount of assets in a short amount of time.
Alright, thanks for the tip. I've actually just finished a high poly version of the model so it looks as though I'll be able to plug that into xnormal. I plan on testing out the many other suggested fixes here as well.
bugo, turtle is really hard to get now as I've recently found out because autodesk bought them and shut the website down. Does turtle do high to low or are you referring to just baking a lightmap using the low?
Your answer is both, it can also bake your AO from the normal map. However you want, with a good speed and quality. Yes, it's autodesk stuff now, but you can wait until 2012 have it. Hopefully they will do it free. I heard Maya 2011.5 already have it if you have Premium Autodesk account.
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http://www.renderhjs.net/textools/
renderhjs' textools are quite excellent and usefull, allowing quick ways and customizable settings to bake some quality maps and have it automatically copied to your clipboard for Photoshop. Uses both Lightracer and Mental Ray.
Most definately, plus i find that its AO is fast as hell...
even on a 1.2million poly model and baking to a lower res, took my amd 940quad about 3mins max i think...
I also find its normal map produces really well, and fast again. I also love the ease of UV layout use within Blender vs say max etc.
Alright, thanks for the tip. I've actually just finished a high poly version of the model so it looks as though I'll be able to plug that into xnormal. I plan on testing out the many other suggested fixes here as well.
Thanks alot.
Your answer is both, it can also bake your AO from the normal map. However you want, with a good speed and quality. Yes, it's autodesk stuff now, but you can wait until 2012 have it. Hopefully they will do it free. I heard Maya 2011.5 already have it if you have Premium Autodesk account.