mikezoo: Did you install the PhysX_9.09 and the oalinst.zip file?
I'm running vista 64bit with nvidia 8800 gt card myself. Everything works fine but it crashes if I open the Particle Editor.
I almost gave up on this because my characters were turning up wacky but I tried some of the test files from EQ and Val and I knew it was my own fault when I saw their models working well.
One of the major issues I didn't notice at first was that you have to rotate the light correctly when viewing your model. I loaded up the shady environment and when it was all black I thought something was wrong, but really I just had to rotate the light.
The other thing I had to do was invert the green channel in photoshop. I wish there was a box I could tick for this, but its not too much effort to invert it manually.
The last thing that was weird is that I have to tick the box that says "object space normals" however they are tangent space normals that I am using (the blue colored texture type).
But I got this working great with that Mexican Bandit of mine. Its a simple mesh that doesn't have a spec map or alphas so I figured it would be a good one to test first time around. BTW all those post effects to play with are awesome. Thanks everyone for all the info on this great engine!
You really shouldn't have to click object space, and if you are its likely messing something up pretty bad. Post a screenshot of what it looks like without the OS check.
it looks like the smoothing is totally wrong in your obj, make sure normals is ticked when you're exporting. The first image is definitely not correct either.
EarthQuake: Your awesome man! That was exactly the problem, exporting without normals box ticked. It's looking much better now I think, and I guess I forgot what my Mexican bandit was supposed to look like (cause it was more cartoony looking in the other shot). Anyways thanks, and I'm looking forward to using this engine for all my future project needs.
Also, brad, you don't have to invert the green channel by hand. If baking from max bring up the options (click options button beside pick button in projection mapping in render to texture dialogue) and make sure the green is set to 'up' instead of 'down'. If baking in xnormal (which you really should be using marmoset) then it defaults to Y+, but you can always check by clicking the '...' button beside the normal map checkbox in bake maps.
Thanks for the info guys, I just got it working.
I was banging my head around; reinstalled it, made sure everything was up to date, and then, clicked " run as an administrator" before I launched it. It worked perfectly. I have no idea why that setting would affect like it was. Now If i don't "run as administrator" it still works fine. I swear, that's all i did.
I've noticed the OBJ center bug as well, quick fix seems as you said, to just save as .mesh and load it back up.
As for the video problems, try setting the resolution to 100 pixels less both width and height than your resolution(so i use 1680x1050, i would set it to 1580x950) See if that fixes your issues. If not, it is probabbly some weird video driver issues, you may have an unsuported card, etc.
Do you think we can get a quick run down on the use of the ambient map? I tried baking it down like I would a light map, and seeing what happens, but I just either get everything really dark or no effect. Not quite sure what I should be doing here. I have a second uv set for the items in question, and I'm just baking their AO.
The ambient map slot is for a 2nd uv channel lightmap. If you're applying an ao map to a mesh with unique uvs, just bake it into your diffuse/spec(better that way anyway, as you can colorize it, edit in any way you want, etc).
Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but I have read everything and cannot recall.
But is there a way to show wireframes (other than the red default) or capture turntables inside Marmoset?
eheheh - you could always manually rotate the model 5 % and screen capture, rotate and capture (15x) and then pshop as a gif?
and just make a 'wireframe texture' - so from max's textporter copy the b&w unrwap map (black lines and white space fill) and apply it as a texture aswell as an alpha?
EarthQuake, achmedthesnake: That's okay, really. I'm quite happy with what I have been doing lately anyways, showing construction shots in Max and 1 beauty render in Marmoset. I just wanted to know if it had these features. Achmedthesnake, I get what your saying about sort of hacking it to get these results though, very clever; thanks.
After reading up and down this forum and the Tutorial.txt, Iam not quite sure what Iam doing wrong, nor really what Iam doing right. Hell, its probley somthing simple,
What Iam doing is:
Testing with just a 1 simple polygon plane, and ive tryed exporting it out of maya09 and max. Making sure before I export, that they were the last (and only) editied mesh with correct pivot point on the plane.
From what I gather I need my to put my alpha (opacity map) map in my Diffuse map. Which goes in the channels as an Alpha Mask, in photoshop?
Then in toolbag, I can create a mat, load up my obj and load up my diffuse map. Go into blend mode and try one of the options?
Iv been saving as both 24/32 bit tga's.
eh? Iam missing somthing? Any thoughts, most apperciated.
Yeah that may be your problem there. If dont need a normal map, try using the simpleenvironment instead.
Otherwise i know some versions of PS had a bug where it wouldn't save alphas in TGAs... I'm thinking PS7? Just make sure the alpha is being saved correctly.
If you crank up the alphatest slider you should see something if the alpha is saved correctly.
sadly weather or not I have a normal/spec map in there makes any difference. Same results. As far as the alpha threshold goes, it doesn't affect the plane until it reaches 1. Perhaps it is Photoshop. Grrr. I was screwing with this all afternoon. I bet its something stupid.
**Edit - Yeah you were right EQ. For some reason, Iam using CS4. And I cant seem to save out alpha masks from PSD's to TGAs. It puts in a empty slot in the channels. hmmr. Allthough I can save an alpha mask in a tga. soooo problem solved. Thanks alot guys for the heads up.
I am only having 2 small problems. The first is, weird patches of my model not showing normals, check out the screen...
The second issue I am having is that when using ~ to get to the consol I typed in setscreenshot res 4096 and got an invalid command. Sorry if this is pretty stupid but I want to be able to render out my image at a nice res.
Well, I don't see what you are talking about with the normals, but I had a similar issue as what you are describing and it was simply a matter of checking the box next to "normals" when I exported from 3ds max. My smoothing groups were all messed up when I tried to export without that box checked.
As for the second question type this exactly. You just need spaces in the right places.
Ah cool thats why the command didn't work! Thanks! As for the normals you can see the bright spot right on his right underarm area (our left). I think it may be my uvs are screwy. I'll have to check it out...
Ah cool thats why the command didn't work! Thanks! As for the normals you can see the bright spot right on his right underarm area (our left). I think it may be my uvs are screwy. I'll have to check it out...
I actually found the same lighting artifacts on my model tonight and figured out it's not importing smoothgroups/hard edges from max. To fix this I just separated the edges in max and re-exported.
The first issue(fucked up normals) tends to happen when you have a few verts welded to the same position in your uvs, generally this isnt a problem in most engines, but marmoset hates that and makes any polygon touching those verts have fucked normal data. So check that. Usually from welding with too high of a tollerance
so, will this only work, with simple diffuse map? Or can the toolbag handle say, 2 diffuse/2normals/2 spec maps?
Pretty much is there a way to throw in 2 meshes together? Combine them together as one mesh, export them out then assign materials in toolbag? in the editor I only have one chunk, with 2 materials. Could this be a problem? Because I cant figure out how to export objects into separate "chunks". Experimentation on my end has yielded 1 texture on the entire obj. Any advice would be so helpfull. Thanks alot!
Iam sorry, I don't follow Muzz.
I did not think the marmoset would let me have more than one obj at a time. From what I gather, i have to have my two seperate meshes, then combine them at the last minute, export them, then by some "magic voodoo" it will work. lol. Say, Under the Chunks menu it will give me 2 separate chunks? Iam not sure.
That did it! Thanks guys. I have to say I wish I would have joined polycount for the war. One post and you've been WAAAAY more helpful than CG hub. Thanks again. See you on the battlefield I guess! :poly136:
an wiki would be cool indeed.. or to make a faq maybe..
ok my problem is that the tangentspace nm looks realy.. strange.. some parts are ok but most are realy bad..and i think it could have somehting to do with the normals of the mesh?! but it´s a standard max obj export (with normals exported)
with object space all looks fine (eccept that the same part - mirrored- on the other side of the model (using the same texture space) is lit wrong (as i think is normal for object space normal maps, isn´t it?)
but why is my tangent space looking so odd? (flipped the green chan already)
make sure you have a diffuse and normals applied. Also do not try using OS maps with a tangent space map, it will NOT be correct.
also, post an image of your normal map
i does look the same with our without diffuse .. you can just see it better.. i could also have just applied a plain grey diff (viewing it here.. no visible difference)
i´ve tested a tangent AND an object space normalmap.. (haven´t added the detail-pass to the o-nm though)
the model + the t-nm does work in max very well :poly142:
already checked the obj (no normal errors)
EDIT: strange is.. there are parts on the model where the t-nm is correct.. (as you can see in the first shot) i realy think the normals of the model are wrong i´m checking the obj exporter now
i finally got this to work...which makes me happy....cause i'm a goof. but i'm just wondering about these slight geo artifacts. all one smoothing group out of max. quick normal and a flat diff are provided in screenshot. thanks guys!!!!
so i FINALLY got a chance to get this up and running at home. here's a max(left) and marmoset(right) image with an old model. this thing is really cool. i've read throught the pages and can't remember what the deal was w/reflectivity.
Reflectivity is basically always on, the specular/diffuse lighting is derivied from cubemaps(hdr image based lighting) so its always receiving ambient reflection, and specular reflection. You can tweak the blurriness of the specular reflection(glossiness) by adjusting the spec sharpness. You cant use a mask for this, so if you want multiple gloss settings per model, you have to use separate chunks with separate materials.
i finally got this to work...which makes me happy....cause i'm a goof. but i'm just wondering about these slight geo artifacts. all one smoothing group out of max. quick normal and a flat diff are provided in screenshot. thanks guys!!!!
This looks like your triangulation is different in the app that in was baked with. You could try triangulating in the app you baked with, and load that mesh. Or triangulate before you bake.
Love the toolset. Don't think I have anything more to offer on bugs, features, etc... that haven't already been covered. I'll just say thanks and post a shot.
Everything works just awesome, I'm very happy with marmoset, thanks alot guys.
Though got small problem here, shadows behave weird on some surfaces of my model.
Is there any quick way to tweak shadows or fix it somehow? Re-baking normals is not an option
Those problem parts are double sided polygons, copied and inverted face normals.
sorry if this was discussed before
ok here's more info about this problem, I've ran some tests, whole issue based around backface culling and alphas. Question is, how do I get proper shading using alphas and doublesided faces?
Question, in the read me it says to open the toolUSER.CFG to mess with the resolution settings, well when I try to open it, I do not have anything that opens .CFG.
There are a couple of things you can try from what I have gathered.
You can try increasing the resolution of the shadows.
(Type " ~ " command prompt, then: )
"set render.shadows.res 4096"
I have also noticed that the size of your mesh can influence the shadows. This did indeed make a big difference for me on a couple of occasions. Personally, I work with huge meshes when brought into Marmoset. I know this judging by the scale character that you can turn on and off in the viewport. If you scale your character down to the correct scale (useing the white cutout character), this may resolve some issues.
Replies
I'm running vista 64bit with nvidia 8800 gt card myself. Everything works fine but it crashes if I open the Particle Editor.
I almost gave up on this because my characters were turning up wacky but I tried some of the test files from EQ and Val and I knew it was my own fault when I saw their models working well.
One of the major issues I didn't notice at first was that you have to rotate the light correctly when viewing your model. I loaded up the shady environment and when it was all black I thought something was wrong, but really I just had to rotate the light.
The other thing I had to do was invert the green channel in photoshop. I wish there was a box I could tick for this, but its not too much effort to invert it manually.
The last thing that was weird is that I have to tick the box that says "object space normals" however they are tangent space normals that I am using (the blue colored texture type).
But I got this working great with that Mexican Bandit of mine. Its a simple mesh that doesn't have a spec map or alphas so I figured it would be a good one to test first time around. BTW all those post effects to play with are awesome. Thanks everyone for all the info on this great engine!
I was banging my head around; reinstalled it, made sure everything was up to date, and then, clicked " run as an administrator" before I launched it. It worked perfectly. I have no idea why that setting would affect like it was. Now If i don't "run as administrator" it still works fine. I swear, that's all i did.
very strange.
Im having a bit of trouble finding a 2008 trial version.
But is there a way to show wireframes (other than the red default) or capture turntables inside Marmoset?
eheheh - you could always manually rotate the model 5 % and screen capture, rotate and capture (15x) and then pshop as a gif?
and just make a 'wireframe texture' - so from max's textporter copy the b&w unrwap map (black lines and white space fill) and apply it as a texture aswell as an alpha?
After reading up and down this forum and the Tutorial.txt, Iam not quite sure what Iam doing wrong, nor really what Iam doing right. Hell, its probley somthing simple,
What Iam doing is:
Testing with just a 1 simple polygon plane, and ive tryed exporting it out of maya09 and max. Making sure before I export, that they were the last (and only) editied mesh with correct pivot point on the plane.
From what I gather I need my to put my alpha (opacity map) map in my Diffuse map. Which goes in the channels as an Alpha Mask, in photoshop?
Then in toolbag, I can create a mat, load up my obj and load up my diffuse map. Go into blend mode and try one of the options?
Iv been saving as both 24/32 bit tga's.
eh? Iam missing somthing? Any thoughts, most apperciated.
Hard to say anything more than that, without actually knowing what problem you are having. Post some images or explain the issue please.
The plane remains the same, No change at all. Its just the diffuse texture without the opacity. I included screenshot just for good measure.
Many thanks.
Otherwise i know some versions of PS had a bug where it wouldn't save alphas in TGAs... I'm thinking PS7? Just make sure the alpha is being saved correctly.
If you crank up the alphatest slider you should see something if the alpha is saved correctly.
**Edit - Yeah you were right EQ. For some reason, Iam using CS4. And I cant seem to save out alpha masks from PSD's to TGAs. It puts in a empty slot in the channels. hmmr. Allthough I can save an alpha mask in a tga. soooo problem solved. Thanks alot guys for the heads up.
I am only having 2 small problems. The first is, weird patches of my model not showing normals, check out the screen...
The second issue I am having is that when using ~ to get to the consol I typed in setscreenshot res 4096 and got an invalid command. Sorry if this is pretty stupid but I want to be able to render out my image at a nice res.
THANKS AGAIN!
As for the second question type this exactly. You just need spaces in the right places.
"set screenshotres 4096"
I actually found the same lighting artifacts on my model tonight and figured out it's not importing smoothgroups/hard edges from max. To fix this I just separated the edges in max and re-exported.
so, will this only work, with simple diffuse map? Or can the toolbag handle say, 2 diffuse/2normals/2 spec maps?
Pretty much is there a way to throw in 2 meshes together? Combine them together as one mesh, export them out then assign materials in toolbag? in the editor I only have one chunk, with 2 materials. Could this be a problem? Because I cant figure out how to export objects into separate "chunks". Experimentation on my end has yielded 1 texture on the entire obj. Any advice would be so helpfull. Thanks alot!
I did not think the marmoset would let me have more than one obj at a time. From what I gather, i have to have my two seperate meshes, then combine them at the last minute, export them, then by some "magic voodoo" it will work. lol. Say, Under the Chunks menu it will give me 2 separate chunks? Iam not sure.
ok my problem is that the tangentspace nm looks realy.. strange.. some parts are ok but most are realy bad..and i think it could have somehting to do with the normals of the mesh?! but it´s a standard max obj export (with normals exported)
with object space all looks fine (eccept that the same part - mirrored- on the other side of the model (using the same texture space) is lit wrong (as i think is normal for object space normal maps, isn´t it?)
but why is my tangent space looking so odd? (flipped the green chan already)
also, post an image of your normal map
i does look the same with our without diffuse .. you can just see it better.. i could also have just applied a plain grey diff (viewing it here.. no visible difference)
i´ve tested a tangent AND an object space normalmap.. (haven´t added the detail-pass to the o-nm though)
the model + the t-nm does work in max very well :poly142:
already checked the obj (no normal errors)
EDIT: strange is.. there are parts on the model where the t-nm is correct.. (as you can see in the first shot) i realy think the normals of the model are wrong i´m checking the obj exporter now
anyways.. i´ve loaded the - from max 2008 exported - obj into max 8 and reexported it from there.. and tadaa... its fine..
... strange... 0.o
This looks like your triangulation is different in the app that in was baked with. You could try triangulating in the app you baked with, and load that mesh. Or triangulate before you bake.
Though got small problem here, shadows behave weird on some surfaces of my model.
Is there any quick way to tweak shadows or fix it somehow? Re-baking normals is not an option
Those problem parts are double sided polygons, copied and inverted face normals.
sorry if this was discussed before
ok here's more info about this problem, I've ran some tests, whole issue based around backface culling and alphas. Question is, how do I get proper shading using alphas and doublesided faces?
What do I need?
LoL! right on...
There are a couple of things you can try from what I have gathered.
You can try increasing the resolution of the shadows.
(Type " ~ " command prompt, then: )
"set render.shadows.res 4096"
I have also noticed that the size of your mesh can influence the shadows. This did indeed make a big difference for me on a couple of occasions. Personally, I work with huge meshes when brought into Marmoset. I know this judging by the scale character that you can turn on and off in the viewport. If you scale your character down to the correct scale (useing the white cutout character), this may resolve some issues.