Combining multiple AO maps in Photoshop

user38

I'm using Photoshop CS5, Maps were baked out of xNormal.

I can view that the AO map isn't lined up properly both in my Maya View port (2011) and Marmoset 1.02

I had no issues doing this with my normals maps but for some reason my AO maps won't line up. UV boarders have not been moved at all. The model is set on reference on it's own layer within Maya.

Pictures of the issue:

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How I'm trying to combine the maps:

I'm doing a simple selection using the alpha channels on each map.

I then expand the selection to about 2 pixels. (not cutting into the map at all)

Invert the selection so that I'm selecting what's over the geometry very little "dead space" (2 pixels worth)

back into viewing the copy the selection and paste... alternately to that I've also deleted the "dead space" then did a "select all" then tried to paste over top of each other. at first this looks like it works but I still see that the AO map isn't lined up properly when I blend it in with my color map.

I found this thread in my search for the answer, it's exactly what I need/looking for but this action isn't working in CS5
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=75814

Outside of that everything I find on "combining AO maps" takes me to blending with the color map. this seems like it should be simple enough to fix and I didn't have any issues doing pretty much the same thing with my normal maps so I don't know what I'm missing here. Thanks in advance.

Bruno Afonseca

To me it looks like your AO rendering is messed up somehow. I get that from time to time using light tracer on 3ds max, so I just switched to xNormal for AO rendering and never had any problems.

user38

fonfa wrote: »

To me it looks like your AO rendering is messed up somehow. I get that from time to time using light tracer on 3ds max, so I just switched to xNormal for AO rendering and never had any problems.

I used xNormal to render out both my normals and AO, I'll try to render out AO again with more edge padding to see if that helps.

Rick_D

just happens, if you can't paint it out in photoshop then adjust the cage in xnormal.

user38

thanks for the help guys, it's been fixed I just moved it into place by hand, not really how I wanted to do it because I feel like that's not the "correct" way to do it but it works, again thanks for the help.

EarthQuake

This sounds like a uv problem, IE you changed your uvs somewhere along the line and the mesh you used to bake AO in xnormal doesn't match up with what you're viewing on. You should never have to move your textures by hand to get them to line up, there is something bad in your workflow here.

user38

EarthQuake wrote: »

This sounds like a uv problem, IE you changed your uvs somewhere along the line and the mesh you used to bake AO in xnormal doesn't match up with what you're viewing on. You should never have to move your textures by hand to get them to line up, there is something bad in your workflow here.

Thanks for the reply EQ, I'm 100% positive the the uv's haven't been moved. I remade both normals and AO maps with a bit more edge padding, normals came out fine, there was an issue again with AO mapping. I think it's something in my workflow for combing the AO maps specifically. It's still bugging me and I hate the fact I had to move them by hand. I want to hurry up and finish this model, when I start on the next one I'll see see if the issue pops up again. How do you typically combine different AO maps? generally how I described?

user38

dustinbrown wrote: »

In Photoshop use Paste in Place instead of regular Paste. Or instead copy/pasting the shells, just select the whole texture and copy/paste it. They're all set to multiply anyway so it shouldn't matter.

Thanks for the paste in place tip, that was it. It corrected my problem when I tried it out on the original maps, I did have issues overlaying 3 AO maps, two I could have gotten away with, that's why I was selecting the shells. It started to look blown out but when I messed with the opacity levels it didn't seem to help much and took away a lot of the shadow information with it.

Thanks everyone!