Baking to Low Poly from Many High Poly meshes laying atop one another.

dproeder

So I have a character model I am doing for Mutant League Challenge, http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=91884

This is the first time I have extracted the clothes, for example, from the main body as a separate zTool. So I have all these zTools laying on top the main body, and of course I want to bake the colors and normals from them ALL onto a low poly base mesh. The trick is baking the clothes and exposed skin only, and not the skin underneath the accessories.

I usually use Topogun to Transfer the Color, AO, and Normal Maps.

My workflow so far as been to decimate all the clothes (Singlet, Bandages, and Kneepad) as well as the body, then combining them all as one Ztool. I then export the newly created ztool with all the pieces into Topogun.

I am playing around using a custom cage created out of the body at 3 subD levels that encompasses the body and clothes. I inflate and smooth appropriately to make sure the cage does not intersect itself and encases all the detail.

Of all the tutorials I've worked through and sources I have used, I have never really come across a clean workflow for this issue. If anyone has tips or can direct me to a resource to educate, it would be great.

Butthair

Let me know if I'm not getting it here. If you export the hi poly as the many sub tools they are, you could try using xNormals to to project your hi to lo poly. You could still use topogun to create the lo poly, but project that with the non-decimated hi poly from zBrush.

xNormals.

dproeder

Yes, I am familiar with xnormal and the ability to import highest Sub D level objs into the program.

The main obstacle I have is the overlaying subtools like the hand bandages, and the leotard/singlet. Here is a test bake I did with a color bake to show you the trouble I am having.




As you can see the bake projection will pick up on some of the bandage in parts, then some of the wrist in other parts. I used default bake settings in topogun, letting the program create the bake cage from the low poly mesh. It is pulling information on both the outside and inside of the bake cage.

Another issue I will have if I use xnormal is capturing the polypaint texture. I decimate the polypaint as well as the high Sub level sculpt details.

dproeder

Ive managed to get the normal and color maps of the Head, Body, and Shoes. I am stumped on how to combine the normals and colors of the clothes onto the low poly mesh though.

dproeder

Solved. I just made 2 or 3 different bakes with the projection cage at different distances from the model. I also just decimated and exported the leotard/singlet out of zbrush, and baked it alone onto the whole low poly body mesh. I also did a bake where I did a smooth to the low poly mesh's fingers to increase their polycount. This alowed me to create cleaner maps when baking onto the smoothed low poly fingers. I then just masked off areas across all the baked maps that were inaccurate or dirty looking.

The Results: