HIgh Poly Texure - Low Poly Texure Baking? TexTools, Xnormal or Max?

Ace-Angel

Hey to all,

I'm in a little but of a pickle, so if someone could help me that would be great, please don't be shy in sharing your idea, who knows, you might even win a cookie of doom! (Great for taking over the world).

I have a model in Max, one is high poly, one is low poly, both hard surface models.

Now on my high poly, I have have chamfered edges, dents, holes and extra pieces in place ON the high poly mesh. They're not seperate object which I can detach, they're PART of my high poly.

EXAMPLE IMAGE:


I'm trying to use TexTools/EdgeFinder to create a quick guide for my dirt-map/cavity of sorts on my high poly, because it has all those extra details I need. The problem is, I forgot unwrapping my high poly.

I unwrapped my low-poly afterwards and didn't think about the benefits of early unwrapping.

So my question is, is there a way for me to create a map FOR my high poly, apply it ON my high poly, and then BAKE IT DOWN onto my low poly?

I tried a google check, and there are too many confusing posts on how this done, and hence, I'm perplexed. Anyone mind lending me a hand or two?

binopittan

Ace-Angel wrote: »

So my question is, is there a way for me to create a map FOR my high poly, apply it ON my high poly, and then BAKE IT DOWN onto my low poly?

Yes. Just search Diffuse element on your RTT.

Ace-Angel

Strange, I cannot find it, mind showing me a screencap of where it is?

binopittan

Rick_D

why do you want to unwrap your high poly? :S

polygonfreak

Rick_D wrote: »

why do you want to unwrap your high poly? :S

To get to the center of a tootsie roll.

r_fletch_r

Rick_D wrote: »

why do you want to unwrap your high poly? :S

Not to advocate spending alot of time unwrapping the high but, When I use photo textures as a base I often do a 'blended box map' of them on the high poly, get the scale right and then bake it down onto the low. It really reduces time spent seam fixing.. that said it only works on some texture types.

Ace-Angel

I need to unwrap the high poly (even a quick and dirty flatten mapping works fine in my case) to bake or create a dirt map based upon vertex.

Textools and EdgeFinder are both scripts which do this, and I have extra details on high poly which I would like to capture which I don't have on my low poly.

@Bino: Thanks, much appreciated.

Bal

What do you call a dirt map exactly?
Seems like there are lots of other maps you could just bake normally from this for what you want, ambient occlusion being the first obvious choice of course.
Also, that hipoly is a cube, should take about 5 seconds to unwrap if you really need it (don't think you should), even if it has a few million triangles.

Motherdear

Why don't you just bake down the normals and create an xnormal cavity map in ps and just blend that onto your texture. It will find the corner areas you want and you can use blend if to control the amount of "dirt" or you can even use it as a mask for whatever you want done.

you can see an example of this done by racer445 in his tutorial video about 3/4th in or so.

http://www.nextgenhardsurface.com/index.php?pageid=racer445

r_fletch_r

Motherdear wrote: »

Why don't you just bake down the normals and create an xnormal cavity map in ps and just blend that onto your texture. It will find the corner areas you want and you can use blend if to control the amount of "dirt" or you can even use it as a mask for whatever you want done.

you can see an example of this done by racer445 in his tutorial video about 3/4th in or so.

http://www.nextgenhardsurface.com/index.php?pageid=racer445

There are much better ways to do that. Either use the Tension modifier in max to get the concave or convex areas. and render a vertex colour pass. or renderer a curvature map in XNormal. both a bit slower but both a million times more predictable and accurate.


Ace: why do you need uvs to bake vertex colours? isnt that what those 2 filters use?

Ace-Angel

Here is the script I'm talking about: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/edgefinder

TexTools also has such an option. Ofcourse, TexTools is much stable and works 99% of the time, while Edge Finder usually times out after several uses.

r_fletch_r

That generates vertex colour data. no uvs needed.

For generating cavity/convexity data you'd be better off with a modifier like tension
http://rpmanager.com/plugins/TensionMod.htm
Its much faster than a script.

or use XNormal.

Both will generate the data with no uvs on the HP mesh

EarthQuake

Yeah, it isn't really worth your time to bake this onto the high, then onto the low, there are a wide variety of options to either bake directly to the low, or extract that sort of detail from Crazybump/Xnormal/etc.

Ace-Angel

Yeah, that's the problem, EdgeFinder doesn't seem to show the Vertex color for me unless I apply it as a diffuse.

Also, I took a look at the Tension Modifier, I am abit confused by the rollout menu...is there a quick start guide I could take a look at by any chance? I can't seem to get it work half of the time.

Also, which function in Xnormal should I be using? I thought all of them required me to have UV's or such.

r_fletch_r

To render edgeFinder put a vertex colour node in the diffuse. To bake this just bake a diffuse element onto the low poly.

Tension is a little complex at first. You can use this script to apply it to a selection of objects. I personally apply it on top of my smoothing as it gets a sharper result. If you do this manually dont forget to turn of Isoline display

for obj in selection do
(
	for m in obj.modifiers do
	(
		if classof m == turbosmooth then m.isolineDisplay = off
	)
	tMod = tension()
	addModifier obj tMod
	obj.showVertexColors = on
	tMod.doCompressRed = off
	tMod.doExpansionGreen = off
	tMod.convexIsComparitive = off
)

To apply it manually make sure the follow options are turned off.
*Do Compression Red
*Do Compression Green
*Relative to Ref Pose

Once you switch the off click 'Toggle Vert Colors'

Increasing the scale values will bring out lower levels of convexity/concavity.
Increasing the exponenents will knock back lower levels and boost the highs

PROFIT!


In X Normal you can bake the curvature map from the high to the low like you would do a normal map.
Just enable curvature map in the maps list.

Ace-Angel

Thanks, now it's working, awesome! Didn't know about Tension working like this!

I think I'll stick with Tension for now, Xnormals Curvature map doesn't give me a cool map (looks almost as if parts of my model 'pool' colors instead of bleeding them).