I got some stones i'm doing for a smaller scene. Atm i'm at 1.5k stones with a tris count on 3.5m.. Not very easy to work with.
So my friends ask me, why not bake the highpoly stones, it's five different ones, one by one to a lowpoly version. Like 20-30 triangles. The place them in my scene and apply the normal map as an diffuse and bake diffuse to texture. THEN combine that with a regular normal bake from the low stones.
Wouldn't be any technical difficulties with the normal direction of the LP stones right? Or i'm i thinking all crazy here?
Ofc i would be using tangent base normals..
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Makes no sense to me :-/
In xNormal though you can load your rocks, load the normal maps in the "Base texture to bake" slot, and check "Base texture is a tangent-space normal map", that will alow to bake it all in one go (normal maps + mid poly geometry) without messing up your tangent basis.
Still seems like a kind of convoluted way of doing things, not sure why it would be necessary.
In max im doing the same sort of thing. I am using very low poly proxy stones that have a substitute modifier on them which points to a library of about 20 medium poly stones which are normal mapped from some highpoly models.
The detail rocks only load at render time so its pretty light to work with.
If they are all joined into one object detach the all the separate elements that way it can adaptively degrade the objects as you work in the viewport.
It only does adaptive degradation on the object level not sub-object so if you have 3mil tris sitting in one object its going to have trouble. But if it can cull a few thousand that are far away from the viewport camera then it will be much faster.
You can also lighten the load by turning some of them to display as bounding boxes (select object(s), right click, object properties, check on display as bounding box).
You could also try applying a proOptimizer modifier and turn it off before rendering.
You could take it into zbrush and run it through Decimation Master which will lighten the load but preserve the detail.
Yeah, that was what i where looking for i guess. Same friend just told me the the exact same way.
Why? Well, try to get 1500 mid poly stones in to a scene and make them look dynamic. It's really hard to work with.
Like they bean their for awhile. Not just put there random. I want to use physics on them so that they place nicely. And if i can have a stone that's 20 tris instead of 2000 tris. That will help me ALOT!
I could have gone with instancing the stones for optimization, but i've found that's hard for maya to export an obj out of that. Or well, the memory runs out.
And yeah, i use Maya.. But thx for the Max tips (:
However, all you really got after all that messing about was 90% the same as an ambient occlusion map on top of the diffuse (multiply layer setting); albeit one that handles highlights and brightness just as well as the shadows and darkness.
Wouldn't really worry about trying it that way in any program.
I'm curious though; you're exporting them as OBJ for what reason?
As for your physics, why not just make a low-poly (maybe 20 tris)...thing, then make the hi-poly stones children of that. Only use physics on the blocky-shape with the low detail and it'll scatter your stones faster, I think.
I don't wnat any diffuse info from the normal map. Just the normal map it self.. I from what i understand i can bake a AO to the LP stones and bake it in xnormal the same way.
Your idea about the paranting is a pretty nice idea! Though, if i'm happy with what the xnormal bake thing gives me, i'm gonna go with that.
And why OBJ? Dun know.. Maybe SMB is better for xnormal bakes?
I'm doing a rail module-ish. That's gonna be repeated, so yeah. Pretty much the same as a tiling texture.
But that the same thing that xNormal does? Is their a difference?
Hightmaps isn't a bad idea! But wouldn't the normals from my original stone be a bit cranked?
And oh, this is what i'm doing..
Or you bake a height map, and assign this as a displacement map on your low, but you'll need to sub-divide the low and then its not worth it, the normal map thing is super easy.
Oh also, make sure you soften up the edges of those wood planks(and the rails too?) so they show up well in the bake.
I'm a maya guy *5 minutes later* I just realized that Maya have the exact same function :P That's great, never looked for it.
The beams are just 6 sided cubes. The highpolys look like this.
Cheers!