The floating part needs to be above the surface if the area that you want it to bake onto. To the baker, it doesnt matter how far it is away from the mesh as long as the projection cage covers it 100% before you bake. Most people put it as close as they can because it looks cleaner and is less distracting to work with. For…
I'm having trouble with this tutorial - http://wiki.polycount.com/SubdivisionSurfaceModeling?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=subd_floatingpanelinglines.jpg When I do this my geometry literally floats above the base mesh. When I push it in the base mesh it eats recesses. I think I'm definitely doing something wrong. Can…
@EarthQuake I didn't mean he should just rely on floating geo for all modeling details, I meant the he's approaching the detail wrong with the sharp angles that wont show up well in the bake
My thoughts too. Although floating geometry might have a few issues caused by the roundness of the object. Ndo, or baking and adding those details later right into the map seem like better idea to me.
All of those details look like they would be separate geometry? You could float most of that, if it really had to be one piece you could just subdivide the mesh and model it in. Shouldn't be any real trickiness to to it.
What you have done is still build into the shape and not floating :P I use splines for such details, you have a lot of control and can change the shape/profile of your details with in seconds. Here's a little tut:
I'm back again :P I'm not sure if this belongs here but I have an issue with floating geo. I'm trying to model in an indent into a gun. However, when create a flat surface to make the indent curve into the model, it can be seen that this doesn't match the shape of the surface.. as can be seen in the screenshot. I figure if…
Why not doing old fasioned box modeling?Just block out the base shapes and refine further, add some floating details add the barrel and stuff. This part is one of the easier ones, the others are more difficult to be honest.
When you get around to trying it, pull the camera back and aim straight on to the face that the pieces float above; that's pretty much how it looks to the normal map bake process, minus any effects from the perspective camera.
Floating bits are most definitely used. I think theres an easy option to turn off shadow casting on backfacing geo in max, but no option like that in xnormal. But regardless, painting out the AO errors is WAYYYYYY faster than the alternative.