3dsmax 7 Normal Mapping Mini-tutorial!
polycounter lvl 18
I did a quick tutorial to show off the speed and efficiency of 3dsmax 7's Render to Texture features and the DirectX viewport shaders.
Take a look at it over on CGChat (I'm currently lacking webspace, so I had to use attachments).
http://www.cgchat.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=196134
Enjoy!
MoP
Take a look at it over on CGChat (I'm currently lacking webspace, so I had to use attachments).
http://www.cgchat.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=196134
Enjoy!
MoP
Replies
Really nice tut though
Btw, pointing out that DX texture previewing in viewports is unavailable on some materials (such as double-sided)...at least as far as I can tell...
It just looks a bit blurry, although perhaps thats the new mip-mapping problems Im hearing about in Max 7...
Trust me, with a few coloured lights and a specular map thrown into the shader too, the results are much more impressive. I need to try it with something more detailed, like a character's face, soon...
MoP
Our new TRI normal mapper shoots rays in both direction, and we can adjust the length. This works great because it doesn't matter if it's under or over.
Though, poop brings a good point in that you should pick one and try to stick to it as best you can. Either try and stay on top or stay underneath.
In the tutorial I posted there, the "nuts" on the wheel hub stick through the low-poly mesh, but I edited the Projection cage to take that into account, and it seems to render down to the normal-map and produce the correct result.
Poopinmymouth: No, I think it's ok in Max7's normal-renderer to have intersecting mesh edges. If you're getting hard lines in the normal map, you can turn on Supersampling and it will look right.
I've never had any problems with pieces sticking through the low-poly mesh, as long as they don't go TOO far. And I reckon building a low-poly cage to entirely cover every part of a high-poly model would result in the low-poly mesh looking too "bulky", if you know what I mean. I reckon you should build the low-poly cage to stay as close to the average surface of the high-detail mesh as possible, regardless of whether this means the highpoly is sticking a short distance "through" the low-poly or not.
I will experiment some more with an organic object like an arm, and see what the results are like.
MoP
Per128, Poopinmymouth, Skanker: Would you care to check that out and tell me your thoughts?
The low-poly mesh is both inside and outside the high-detail model, and the resulting normal-map seems perfectly fine...
Per: I cannot see why you say Max7's normal-mapper is "totally unusable"! From what I've tried, it gives equal or better quality, more consistent results than either ORB or Melody, without any raycasting problems regardless of whether the highpoly mesh is inside or outside the lowpoly mesh...
Can you describe an instance (or even better, send me a file!) where Max7's normal mapper would not create a usable normal-map?
Thanks,
MoP
What is UV-projection? Are you referring to the normal-mapping option in the Render to Texture Projection Options screen? Is that the thingy which requires both the high-poly and low-poly objects to have the same UV-coordinates?
Personally I can't see why I'd use that over the standard Projection modifier method. Therefore I haven't tried it, so I have no idea if it works!
Unless you're talking about something else...
Enlighten me!
Next are you gonna tell me that UV-projection works in the final version too??
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Why yes it does. I've been using it to pull textures off of our high poly Blur models. Works like a charm. Though, there are still some kinks to be worked out. Like being able to render to a 'non-square' map and such things like that.
I was trying it out last month to import an OBJ from Zbrush and it took over 2hours still frozen. Using a plugin OBJ importer in Max6 took 5minutes to import the same model.
I guess a lot of stuff in the final version must be more stable than in the beta, then?
Actually, now that I think about it, your might have just been a one-off bug, because I'm pretty sure the OBJ importer/exporter for Max7 is just an implementation of the freely-available HABware plugin for previous versions.
I just tried adding it to the plugins list, and it gives a "Duplicate Class ID" warning when loading the ImportOBJ.dli and ExportOBJ.dle plugins, so I guess they're the same. The UI for the plugin options looks identical to the older HABware ones too.
So I think you might have just been unlucky with the Beta version? Might have been a Max7 bug rather than a problem with the importer.
MoP
Course, you never know with bugs, sounds like its time for anothe try anyway.
And yeah, it was just a 512x256 normal-map. Is there any way of rendering non-square Render to Texture maps?
Yeah, the edge/vert selection thing after doing Connects and Cuts and such in Max7 is very nice. It wasn't like that in Max6, and yeah it was annoying.
Yar!
Cheers. I also just found out, Max7 now has a built-in .OBJ exporter!? Amazing!
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oh yeah and it works sooooo good. I tried it out today on a model i have to do for contract. I just had to fix the size and some smoothing, nothing more.
The portation from max to maya used to take nearly 3 hours per model, right now i need just 2 min. Oh goo! Im so happy...
And MoP, very cool tut. the render to texture feature is just awesome in max. the coolest thing s, you can take a hipoly model with bump and spec and complete diffrent UVs and project it ona low poly model. Also the bump from the highpoly model can be baked in the normalmap itself. Its lake havin permanent orgasms while discovring the new max vetrsion
Perhaps Discreet geared their own more toward supporting maya? Certainly it is useless when it comes to importing a 1-2million poly model back in from Zbrush..