3DS Max - Baking Issues - AO and NRM
polycounter lvl 12
Hey to all,
I'm having abit of a problem in Max's baking.
Basically, whenever I bake my high poly onto my low poly, if I use Scanline 2.5 sampler, everything works fine with both cage and raycast.
But when I revert back to Mental Ray (in Max) and bake it, I start getting horrible spots and specks on my maps, almost as if the rays aren't being hit correctly.
For example, under MR, my Diffuse, Normal and AO maps had horrible blemishes, and even had parts of the bakes missing (both in cage and raycast tests).
While as said earilier, Scanline works fine. Is there a reason for this? Also, under MR, my normal is pretty washed out vs my scanline.
I did not use a light source BTW since I can't find any tutorials on how to setup a proper enviroment for neutral baking for Mental Ray.
Cheers and ciao.
I'm having abit of a problem in Max's baking.
Basically, whenever I bake my high poly onto my low poly, if I use Scanline 2.5 sampler, everything works fine with both cage and raycast.
But when I revert back to Mental Ray (in Max) and bake it, I start getting horrible spots and specks on my maps, almost as if the rays aren't being hit correctly.
For example, under MR, my Diffuse, Normal and AO maps had horrible blemishes, and even had parts of the bakes missing (both in cage and raycast tests).
While as said earilier, Scanline works fine. Is there a reason for this? Also, under MR, my normal is pretty washed out vs my scanline.
I did not use a light source BTW since I can't find any tutorials on how to setup a proper enviroment for neutral baking for Mental Ray.
Cheers and ciao.
Replies
I've actually been encountering weird ass bake issues myself as of late, with AO only, like it refuses to recognise that my mesh has smoothing groups.There are ways around this but I'd much rather know what causes it to begin with. It's certainly not something as simple as upping samples (I only say that as I fear someone will suggest it).
Usually, it's been a miscellaneous mesh error that's caused baking issues, but for the last 3 characters that I've worked on... all have outputted incorrect AO maps. So.. err, yeah... I'd love to hear from someone who knows a thing or two about the whole process.
The only thing I can think of is throwing in an STLCheck Modifier on your mesh and see if anything is wrong, which is what I usually do.
For the smoothing groups on the other hand, depends, are they working as intended. To check this, throw a Normal Modifier on your mesh, it should show the crosses for your normals, if you change smoothing groups, the crosses will change, which will indicate that the Normals are indeed working. If not, then select your mesh under Elements and make a clone of that to a different object and/or reset the Xnormals.
EDIT: I also tried RTTAssist and the results are much worse, bleh. Here are the results of what I mean:
RTTAssist - Same Settings = Heavy blemishes, some parts missing, but captures detail correctly.
Standard Texture Bake - Same Settings = No blemishes or missing parts, but doesn't capture detail correctly.
I'm confused about this, what is going on? I mean bloody hell, I thought being able to bake was not a skill (I used XNormal alot), but now looking at Max, it seems like anyone who uses Max, Maya or ANYTHING else to bake must get a fucking medal.
if your getting faceting in the AO make sure your spread is a value less than or equal to 1. anything higher can cause problems.
NB. Orange text is really annoying. Your gonna find yourself being added to ignore lists pretty soon.
Ace: any change you can pose the segment of the mesh thats causing the issue? It would help in finding a solution.
HOLY JUMPING KANGROO ON A POGOSTICK, ON A SHARK FULL OF SPIDERS FLOATING ON A WHALE MADE OF SUNDAY FUDGE PICKLES.
I...I...I...I...Mental...the...hide...select...bake...works!
This fucking worked...are we serious here? This actually fucking worked! I'm sorry for my language, but what the mighty fucking miserable cunt ridden hell is this?
Why is Mental Ray baking in Max broken? WHY?!
I have to hide my LP mesh to BAKE? Really? That's like me going naked in a church because I want to be closer to heaven, and even if I have baby butt soft skin, that WILL be a bad idea, unless you plan on telling your children said story, in which case, they better grow up hippies since the mental image of Mommy and Daddy meeting naked in Church only have old men in long robes chase them away (very Freudian I might add) won't be an easy one.
Honestly, THIS IS IS THE REASON? Because mental ray can't differentiate between LP and HP models, even when I apply a projection cage? This makes me sick...
Gah, sorry, had to let it out. Anyways, with that out of the way...
Anyone knows or could create a small script which applied an Edit Poly to selected models and hide the polygons as a stack? I think in the meantime, I'll go in a fetal position.
And this is why you're awesome, will do, didn't think about that. Thanks.
I want to be able to use Mental Ray for baking inside of Max for a number of reasons which i prefer over scanline, it anti aliases floating geometry, you can limit the AO shadow cast distance (for doing bakes of interiors of cars, helicopters etc) its quick and so and so on.
But this problem which has been around for quite some time is still not fixed and there does not appear to be many people discussing it on the net. This is such an easily repeatable problem so i am surprised more people are not complaining but does any have a work around. Basically as a test i created a 6 sided box (low poly) and another box with chamfered edges with sub-d (high poly), ground plan, quick unwrap and bake and i get red missed rays errors all over the box as if the low poly mesh is causing issues, it almost matches the z fighting i see in the viewport where polygons are co-planar.
Any help would be most appreciative.
Regards
Whisky
Really interested in anyone's ideas or responses to this ongoing issue
Regards
Whisky