Can xNormal bake out diffuse colors?

grimsonfart · Sep 2014

Hi there!

Im wondering if xNormal can bake out diffuse colors, kind of like a render in 3Ds. Im curious because im rendering out my diffuse in 3Ds now, and then im rendering out the different maps in xNormal, but there is some kind of scale issue with the diffuse, as it gets bigger rendered in 3Ds, while the xNormal renders are smaller (even though they are the exact same size when i export them to xNormal) and i cant get the resized correctly...

imperator_dk · Sep 2014

You can assign a base texture to your highres mesh in xnormal and bake that to your lowpoly, or you can bake vertex colors from your highres as well, both are viable ways to transfer a diffuse map from highres to lowres.

JedTheKrampus · Sep 2014

If you are baking vertex colors, remember to uncheck "Ignore per-vertex color" on your highpoly meshes. Otherwise, bad things will happen.

Could you elaborate more on your resizing problem? It's hard to tell exactly what you're on about. Post some flats, maybe?

grimsonfart · Sep 2014

Alright, thanks for the answers guys. But i was not specific enough and forgot to add something and that is, can it project vertex colors on to a flat plane.

For example after polypaint in Zbrush, can i export the HP painted model, hook up a LP flat plane and render it out that way and still get diffuse colors without any lowpoly unwrapped model? (thats what i need, as im talking about branches, which would be almost impossible to retopologize without breaking).

RE: the resizing problem, was because i was creating branches for my trees. Because i was not able to bake out my diffuse in xNormal i did a render in 3Ds Max, which for some reason would allways turn out smaller and hard to resize to the bakes.

JedTheKrampus · Sep 2014

Well, yes, of course, although you would need to UV-unwrap the plane and get it lined up properly (which you can do just in ZBrush pretty easily, if you want to get everything lined up without importing a millions of polygons mesh into Max.) You'll probably also need to turn up the projection distances if you're baking things out in Xnormal. The Ray Distance Calculator under Tools can help with that.

You might also want to look into using Zbrush's 2.5d mode to export your maps if you're doing a billboard type of thing. It can be a little tricky to get the hang of, so here's a tutorial that I'd recommend watching: http://eat3d.com/free/zbrush_tile

AL normal map material can be gotten here: http://download.pixologic01.com/download.php?f=/library/matcap/digitaldecoy/al_normal_map.zip

grimsonfart · Sep 2014

@JedTheKrampus Thats what i have been doing, but the render keeps coming out completely white. I have tried both bake HP vertex colors and base texture. I usually make my cage in the 3D viewer, so the distance should be just fine. Using Ray distance gives me the same result. I had unchecked ignore veretex colors too

.

Edit, i think i just realized my problem. I exported it first into 3Ds max, then as a OBJ to bake, so no vertex colors on the mesh :poly127: derp

Can xNormal bake out diffuse colors?

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