[Wip] Combat Knife
polycounter lvl 4
Hey guys! This is my first post at polycount so lets make it count. I have been struggeling with this knife for far to long. I want to get it done but I run into loads of baking and smoothing errors.:poly118:.
Somehow the cage in Xnormal is set to tight not baking the floating geometry and causing really weird random errors everywhere
The 3DS max bake cannot render out the sides correctly. I just dont understand why!
Thanks for your attention!
This is the knife:
These are the models:
Wires:
Normal Map applied:
3DS Max baked normal map:
Xnormal baked normal map:
Somehow the cage in Xnormal is set to tight not baking the floating geometry and causing really weird random errors everywhere
The 3DS max bake cannot render out the sides correctly. I just dont understand why!
Thanks for your attention!
This is the knife:
These are the models:
Wires:
Normal Map applied:
3DS Max baked normal map:
Xnormal baked normal map:
Replies
You must be sure it covers completely the HP mesh ( that is: you should not see any part of the HP mesh in the 3D viewer, just the LP's cage color ).
And... sure the "use cage" option is checked in!
Also, play a bit with the "ignore back-facing hits" and "use closest hit if ray fails" options.
On the other hand, pls don't use the old 3dsmax's max2obj exporter because it's very buggy. Use the gw:Obj or the SBM format.
And... always, always, always, triangulate your model + RestXForm + Collapse to Edit mesh before exporting to avoid problems.
And... try to always to center your object aproximately around the world origin (0,0,0) to avoid problems with the search radius.
The distortions may be caused because you moved some cage's vertices... and, remember that the cage does not only control the ray distance but also the ray direction ( which is very useful to remove cylindrical wobble artifacts ). See this page's bottom part:
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow_2.htm
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41776&page=90
The best way is to duplicate your low poly, adjust it like you would a cage and export the low, high and cage out to use in XNormal. Make sure you use a cage in XNormal! Then bake the same one out in Max and cut and paste the 2 in photoshop. Time consuming but worth it for the good bake.
You can also add details like the star, circular indents ect using NDo. Where theres no danger of them warping.
My workflow now has totally changed, and any of the smaller details like these are done in NDo, just the main outlines of objects are baked in XNormal/Maya. This seems to avoid any stretching or warping of smaller details, and saves you the time of making high poly floaters or modelling it into your HP model. There may be a better way of doing this but I've only been baking normals for the past few months and it works for me.
In the Max bake you're getting the "stretched" look you've highlighted because there are a lot of edges merging into 1 vert at that particular point and the normal is compensating for this. The only way I found to get around this was kinda adding supporting edges on the low poly similar to how you would on a high poly, or have the edges wrapping round the handle instead of merging to one point.....but then that adds to the poly count......stupid really. XNormal doesn't seem to do this though compared to maya or max. (Anyone know why that is BTW)?
The distortion on the blade itself is because the HP model is distorted from the get go. I can see that from the 1st picture you posted. But to be fair, that is a really hard detail to get right. I would suggest adding more edge loops closer to the rounded parts to try and combat the stretching up the blade.
Hope you get this sorted asap man. I understand your frustrations. A bit of trial and error and you'll get there. Oh and I highly recommend NDo2 for those tricky details, huge time saver and a great program.