nDo vs traditional baking

Torch

Hey all, just wanted to ask if a lot of you happen to use apps like nDo or crazybump for creating normals from a height map? Been using it a while now and think its pretty awesome, just wondered if you happen to prefer using it to baking from high poly geometry? I'm guessing there are perks to using both, maybe its more a matter of preference. Would be good to hear why you prefer baking from geometry than a height map, or visa versa. Thanks

passerby

really depends on what kinda detial your trying to get on your normal map.

NDO2 is very good for apply detail to plannar areas of a normal map, but if your looking to get nice edges on your model your going to need to bake fro ma highpoly.


also no reason why you cant use both, do a highpoly bake to get nice edges and your larger forms, than use NDO2 for adding detials to the surface.

EarthQuake

Painted bump maps converted to normals will never replace a baked normal map, except for a flat plane(tiling texture or whatnot).

When you bake a normal map from a high res source, you're replacing the mesh normals from the low with those of the high, that means all the shading and everything, its literally impossible to "paint" that.

Baking also gives you seamless results even over uv splits and hard edges.

Just.... not at all the same thing.

You can go the 2d route for replacing some smaller details, but you need distortion free UVS otherwise it can be faster/more accurate to model and bake. When you bake detail down any distortion on your uvs is automatically corrected and accounted for.

So really, the situations where the two would be comparable are very few.

WarrenM

I think Ace-Angel nailed in it a previous thread. If you're doing props that lend themselves well to this work flow then it's:

1. Bake high to low poly for edges and angles. Just large shapes, don't worry about details.

2. NDo for details (bolts, lettering, etc)

I've done a few simple props this way and it's really a very fast way to work.

obliviboy

Warning, self-promoting!

You can create a the normals with ndo and project them on to your model distortion-less (use orthographic view) with my projection painter script. It projects them nicely across the seams and it gives you straight looking normals on your model.

See an example below.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqEXFGM7PAQ"]Projection Painter - Normal Map Projection with NDo - YouTube[/ame]

r_fletch_r

wont this run into problems with view versus normal orientation?

cryrid

Does that projection actually account for the change in normals on the surface it is projecting to, or is it essentially just treating the normal map's information as if it were a diffuse map? Cause you could do that in any other tool (zbrush/photoshop/xsi/etc), but if that's all it is then it probably isn't going to look right for the reasons EQ mentioned.

r_fletch_r

cryrid wrote: »

Does that projection actually account for the change in normals on the surface it is projecting to, or is it essentially just treating the normal map's information as if it were a diffuse map? Cause you could do that in any other tool (zbrush/photoshop/xsi/etc), but if that's all it is then it probably isn't going to look right for the reasons EQ mentioned.

3DCoat can paint normals correctly with stamps.

cryrid

Then 3dcoat isn't just projecting the information as if it were a diffuse color?

Torch

Thanks for the cool replies, I was trying to use Xnormal to bake floating geo before and though it usually gives good results my bake is appearing pretty skewed. I'm guessing though that its because the surface I'm trying to bake onto isn't 100% flat, its slightly curved...pretty sure the UV's are straightened out fine though. : /

EarthQuake

Torch wrote: »

Thanks for the cool replies, I was trying to use Xnormal to bake floating geo before and though it usually gives good results my bake is appearing pretty skewed. I'm guessing though that its because the surface I'm trying to bake onto isn't 100% flat, its slightly curved...pretty sure the UV's are straightened out fine though. : /

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81154

Read that, it should help you understand why that happens and what you can do.

Ace-Angel

It sounds like a averaging issue to me, EQ and Co. have a thread on that at the top. Sticky.

I have seen plenty of characters and items get hand-painted normal maps without baking, and they didn't require no fancy software other then B&W paintings.

It's all in the UV and general baking, the best combo would be to be to bake the larger details and edges from mesh, and the smaller, dents, holes, etc, get painted in.

Best of both worlds honestly, I'm sure this technique works flawlessly in nDo2, not sure about CrazyBump on the other hand...

3DC is also very good, I tried the Normal painting feature, and it's awesome, but it can get confusing at times when you look at an angle and your normals look flat, hurts you eyes and brain after a while.

So my vote is for nDo2...the trial should be enough to persuade you I say.

Joshua Stubbles

Yeah, a combination of the two has been great for my workflow, personally (Max bake + NDO2). You can't get the normals of curved objects and edges with NDO, so only use it for objects that will remain flat, or the texture is used as a tiling BSP-esque style texture. In that case, it should work fine on curved surfaces, so long as you're not trying to replicate a highpoly curved surface.

These are some examples of pure NDO2 normals on curved meshes:




You can get great results with it - but as EQ pointed out, there are some things that you simply cannot and will not ever be able to do with CB or NDO2. At most, using both in your workflow will do

Torch

This has been really informative, seems like I have a lot to learn about baking The one last thing that I can't get my head around is when I bake a smoothed High poly onto my low res mesh, I get nasty 'seams' on the corners or hard edges.

I read somewhere that if you split up your faces where there is a sharp corner, these seams shouldn't appear during the bake, is that the case? Thanks once again for all the help

MrOneTwo

You split up smoothing groups and uv islands where there is a sharp angle.

EarthQuake

Torch wrote: »

This has been really informative, seems like I have a lot to learn about baking The one last thing that I can't get my head around is when I bake a smoothed High poly onto my low res mesh, I get nasty 'seams' on the corners or hard edges.

I read somewhere that if you split up your faces where there is a sharp corner, these seams shouldn't appear during the bake, is that the case? Thanks once again for all the help

This is generally covered in that (stickied) thread I linked to earlier.

MrOneTwo wrote: »

You split up smoothing groups and uv islands where there is a sharp angle.

This^

It is also important to bake with an averaged cage/projection mesh(also covered in detail in that thread).