What (in your experience) gives better bakes?
polycounter lvl 11
What, from your experience, gives a better tiling bake?
For example, say I'm sculpting a tiling texture in ZBrush. Would using the tools inside ZBrush ( Normal matcaps, displacement maps etc) or baking onto a flat plane in XNormal give a better bake?
For example, say I'm sculpting a tiling texture in ZBrush. Would using the tools inside ZBrush ( Normal matcaps, displacement maps etc) or baking onto a flat plane in XNormal give a better bake?
Replies
Many peeps are moving to XNormal for baking since it's faster and the math for the Normals is open, unlike some other software. But again, since nothing is synched, you might as well go with something that doesn't take ages to render a NM at 2x AA.
I meant to say that unless you have programmers who know their stuff and what they're doing with Normals and the engine, why not go with XN? I agree, it's super fast, especially when compared to (in my case) Max, which takes ages for even a basic bake, unless you use 2009, which has the best baking times, but still slower then XN.
I have another question.
Could you guys point me to a tutorial or give me advice on how I would make a tiling texture that I'd bake out using XNormal? The problem I have is with edges, how would you get (say I'm making a tiling brick wall) the bricks on the edges to tile correctly. Is there some kind of trick that someone uses to do such a thing.
I've done it with the flat plane but the edges don't line up exactly.
I was also thinking about making geo bricks, but how on earth do you make the edges tile? Would I have to just use photoshop and paint out the seams?
http://wiki.polycount.com/EnvironmentSculpting?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryEnvironment%5Cb%29
AceAngel: Yeah no problem, was a little surprised 'cause I couldn't imagine anything baking much faster than xnormal ;-)
I've used Max to bake normal maps maybe 2 times, then never again. So slow, so clunky.
One more question.
When you instance an object in Max; can you export out those instances into the hipoly obj file, or do you have to convert all of the instances to an editable poly before exporting?
I'm afraid Max might crash if I have a bunch of ZBrushed sculpts in Max 09 and then convert the instances.
FYI, I'm trying to do the Kevin Johnstone Brick Grid tut and I want to bake my hi to low in XNormal.
Instancing is fine, it's when you start attaching or grouping objects where things get tricky, so make sure organize and plan this ahead of time.
One more question...
How do I export out multiple instances to XNormal.
For example, I'm trying to export out around 20 instanced sculpted bricks.
I want to bake these sculpted bricks to a flat low poly plane in XNormal.
Is there some kind of trick to exporting out multiple instances as one object; or do I have to attache the instances to one another and then export?
Would you happen to know why my normal map is coming out green?
I googled it and from what I was reading, it said my flat plane was either too close or too far from my hi-poly. Anyway, I've been moving my low flat plane poly above, below and directly in the middle of my hi-poly and it's still coming out green. Any ideas?
I seemed to have fixed it by rotating the mesh in 3DS-Max. BUT, I'm not exactly sure if that's what fixed it. I was just kinda figeting with things back and forth and it seemed to kinda fix itself. (I always get bothered when things work out that way).
Yep, it's checked.
Edit: I don't really notice any difference unless it's extremely far from the hi-poly geo. Does it really matter? I'm not sure how it's calculating.
If you're still getting a green bake, your plane may simply be inverted?
Thanks EarthQuake.
I turned off back face cull in max and realized I wasn't paying attention to the normal directions. God, that was driving me insane. Thanks.
Edit: Upon further investigation, I noticed that my hi-poly objects were coming in all green from the bake when I reset the pivots. I ran a normalize modifier on them and they baked out correctly again. Not sure if this is a bug, but it seemed to fix my problems.