little Xnormal problem help...

NAIMA · May 2013

Hello , I am trying to bake the usual AO normals etc with xnormal , but I got in a strange error , when I load the 3dviewer and I create the cage all looks fine , the cage from the low poly is very close actually to the HP and covers it perfectly , so I save and I load the required HP model and the ovb created by the xnormal program for the LP cage ... so I launch then in tools the ray distance calculator but .....

when the green bar reaches the end it says a error mesasage :

"
The High poly model radius is less than two units (2.0) , please scale it as bit up if you get bad results

"

Indeed the result of the AO , despite looks good in most places gets completely black holes ... so how can I do to scale it up ?

I can't go in zbrush scale it up and then make it match withthe already made low poly , I am sure it can be done in Xnormal for both LP and HP but how to do so to fix those errors?

thanks for any answer...

CheeseOnToast · May 2013

There's a mesh scale option under the highpoly and lowpoly tabs. Try changing it from 1 to 10 or even 100. You'll have to do this for both the highpoly and lowpoly meshes.

NAIMA · May 2013

thankyou it was in front of eyes and I couln't see

...

NAIMA · May 2013

Mmmm now is not working ...

The thing I did is put the models HP and LP to 10 in size , then went to launch 3d viewer and expanded a tiny bit the cage so it covered the whole model , then saved ... went off the viewer and went to replace the OVB HP with the actual HP model and put its scale to 10 , then I go to tools and use the ray distance calculator ... all fine ...

but when I go backing the normal map is completely flat ...

what's wrong?

Edit:

to check I went back in the viewer and I see the HP is small and the cage is huge and offsetted on top of the HP ... so is why is flat but , why that? how I make them stick into position , the cage was created with HP and LP at the same place and 10 enlargement , I just replaced the ovb that xnormal puts in the HP with the HP model and scaled it as well up to 10 , should be in the same position so why that?

Farfarer · May 2013

I don't think you need to scale the cage if you've changed the scaling of the meshes via that setting (assuming your cage was correct before you scaled it). I think it'll all get scaled up automatically.

NAIMA · May 2013

yes but in the settings the cage has a 10 , so perhaps it get enlarged still and again , I tried putting back to 1 the Ovb ....

gives again the texture maps but again also the artifacts .. I am not sure how I should fix that now

...

NAIMA · May 2013

I still get those artefacts, any ideas why?

cryrid · May 2013

There are a few possibilities. It might help to post pictures of your settings, what the 3 meshes are like, what the textures look like on the low poly mesh, etc.

Bartalon · May 2013

Generally if I'm using a cage I don't get bad results, and I get that "small scale" warning all the time. I just make sure my stuff lines up in Maya, and leave my mesh scales at the defaults (1.00) in xNormal.

Perhaps your cage is intersecting or not covering your model completely?

NAIMA · May 2013

The cage was perfectly surfacing the other model , and didn't even require that much of an extrusion , but for some reason it created black holes, to solve , I had to load HP and LP in 3dsmax and I scaled them up , then reexported individually and baked again , this time no problems or holes ...

but hey , loading an HP in max slows down my pc to an almoust freezed status , how can people bake textures in 3dsmax if its so slow?

Steamy_Steve · Sep 2018

NAIMA said:
The cage was perfectly surfacing the other model , and didn't even require that much of an extrusion , but for some reason it created black holes, to solve , I had to load HP and LP in 3dsmax and I scaled them up , then reexported individually and baked again , this time no problems or holes ...

but hey , loading an HP in max slows down my pc to an almoust freezed status , how can people bake textures in 3dsmax if its so slow?

I dont know whether 3DSMax has the same thing, but Maya allows you to upload meshes onto the VGA via a plugin called (IIRC) Alembic, which makes handling highpolys waaaaaayyyy more manageable.
You still have to import them the normal way, but then you transfer the load onto the GPU and it gets way smoother.

A little suggestion from my very personal experience: when you wanna bake normal maps of a ZBrush highpoly, bake them onto the lvl 2 or 3 subdiv (read: use lvl 2-3 subdiv as the lowpoly for baking).
That takes care of any discrepancy between high and lowpoly, possibly fixing many problems when your lowpoly is very "low".

You can also use lvl 3 subdiv as a reference to fix lowpoly vertices to better fit the highpoly shape and/or to retopologize it.

little Xnormal problem help...

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