How to bake Xgen fur/hair details in Maya
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Hello everybody. How can you bake the generated fur in Maya on an already existing normal map.
I have a map of normals obtained when baking a highpoly model on a lowpoly model and I want to add fur generated in Xgen in some places.
But I don't understand how to do it. I found an example of using this method, I will attach the image. Maybe someone will explain. I saw a similar topic, but it was vaguely described there.
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i never baked these maps in maya but in marmoset toolbag or substance painter. there it worked pretty straight forward
And how to do it in substance? The principle is the same as with ordinary textures, just draw fur on top with a brush?
I need a normal map to create the illusion of fur. Since hair cards will still be used.
no you can convert your hair into a mesh and use that to bake. i had a post regarding something like this here on the forums… one sec
here we go
it's been a few years since it last came up for me but assuming they haven't broken everything you can use arnold to bake the native xgen fur down. it's orders of magnitude faster than converting to mesh and baking from that
you need to use arnold utility nodes and muck around with materials but you can get normals, direction and various other channels out - you need to be a little cautious about gamma and iirc you can't get a tangent space normal directly but you'll save many hours compared to iterating over the same asset with mesh based fur
This vaguely described Arnold business sounds like a good way for the not-so-technical user to spend a week digging through tutorials and finding out about corner cases and obscure bugs. I sense quality times ahead!
Or … convert to geometry as suggested by Neox. Use a small chunk of fur to find suitable conversion and bake settings, then once satisfied do the whole groom or if too big do it in slices. In whatever baker you prefer.
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that might be a good point - its not like the information isn't all in the maya docs though.
personally I'd rather know about the alternatives than assume the brute force method that wastes hours of your day is the only one available
thank you all for your answers. The idea of turning fur into mesh also came to me before going to sleep. I will try it. But looking at this character, I understand that they baked normals with the help of Arnold. I will still look for information on how to do it, because there is no video on the Internet where at least any textures in Arnold are baked.
I also wanted to add that the color card (orange color) is very similar to the combined one that we get in substance painter. Especially since you can switch and see for sure that there is roughness on the green channel. Perhaps the xgen signature near the textures is the actual baking in the substance painter. I will try, I will write the result.
And it should be remembered that this character and method of displaying fur was created in 2015. It is possible then that a rough version was used.
hours? pretty much any bake is done in seconds these days. no idea how fast arnold bakes, but yes baking with maya can add hours. insane how slow the native baker is, but its single core and as old as time, so go figure :D
perhaps he meant the process of creation itself, not the baking. That is, applying the xgen to the high poly, then converting it, and so on.
Baking AO etc. off a converted fur mesh isn't instant, neither is generating the mesh, exporting it or importing it into painter.
every iteration requires that you do some or all of that - eg. you find you need the hairs to be thicker cos aliasing is breaking them up - thats a re-export .
anyway ..
I've been dealing with artists long enough to know the best solution is the one they can get their head around so I'm not dying on this hill. It worked for me - and judging by the texture names- the artist who created the animal in the first place.
Here's what happened, it's a head test (because it's complete). In principle, it is similar to the pictures from above, but now I have to figure out how to paint them separately, maybe I will use some generators or curve masks in the painter itself to separate the hair from the body.
And I'm new to Maya, I used to work in Blender. Also, xgen is also new to me, because I used cards to make my hair. But nothing is impossible.
the next step is creating a fur coat. There will already be more hairs on it. As soon as I do it, I will definitely send it.
Maybe through the map of thickness, it will help to separate the hairs, for their further coloring.
in my experience, a randomized color mask does the best work in the end.
if you are a blender user, why do it with maya and xgen? i mean i have no experience with hair in blender. but xgen is old, discontinied and buggy as hell. if i was to learn blender for anything i'd probably start with grooming :D
Blender has many disadvantages that Maya does not have. I work in both programs and I can say that Maya is the best program for the 3D character artist.
I doubt that xgen is not needed. Given that the new UE 5 does not work with converted hair, i.e. without cards, xgen is revealed at full power.
Although to each his own. Whoever is comfortable working in any program works in it. And yes, blender does not work with photoshop files.
but blender can create grooms and export alembic hair files to unreal? it doesnt have to be cards
almost all card games...
I'm not talking about a simple mesh.
me neither.
blender can do what xgen does and export it to unreal.
I didn't read every replay so forgive me if I repeat something already said, but:
I've done this in a pretty straightforward way by convert fur to mesh and then bake onto mesh in toolbag. IIRC you can combine both the original normal map and the fur at same time in a single bake.
If the mesh geometry is so dense that import/export is lengthy you can split it into groups to keep from having to wait on computer thinking so much.
All in all, I'd expect it to take shorter amount of time to brute force it this way and be done, compared to having to get familiar with unfamiliar systems. However if you aren't familiar with any of the bakers and you already are pretty fluent in maya, seems like the arnold way would make most sense. Or if you expected to be doing much more of this in future, then taking more time to learn the best solution makes sense, instead of doing it the simplest way.
arnold is terrible for baking. just avoid it
I solved this problem by creating a fur, then combined it with a high-poly model, and then baked it in substance.
of course, you need to pick up the slope of the fur coat and the like, but I only need it on the edges, because I will combine with cards.
I thank everyone for the advice. I am happy to have someone to consult with. Together, I approach the solution of existing problems faster. 😄😊