Baking AO and Normals Problem

[Jhburton]

Hey guys! I'm having a problem when baking the AO and normal maps of this "rockface" mesh. I get some weird lines and I cant figure out how to fix it...
Before anything:

- Its not the low poly mesh protruding through the high poly (lines dont match with the low poly version :(

- Not a hardened normal problem either since I smoothed all the edges in the low poly mesh.

Any sugestions?


http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm214/aos_2008/Untitled.png

http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm214/aos_2008/Cliff_01_normals.jpghttp://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm214/aos_2008/Cliff_01_occlusion.jpg

[JacqueChoi]

Cage not big enough?
too big? too small?

I'm seeing what looks to be some z-fighting on some of your high poly geo. What is that?


BTW what program are you using to bake?

[Goat Justice]

That's pretty weird.

Is your highpoly object a bunch of separate meshes crashed together?

Not sure that would cause this, but if it is made that way, try separating them and baking with just one element visible as a test.

[Jhburton]

Its weird because I've been able to do it this way lodes of times before and this is the first mesh thats messed it up.

@JacqueChoi - What do you mean by Z fighting? In the image I have the low poly version "stuck" inside of the highpoly so its ready to bake. I'm using X-Normal to bake! Cheers for the reply :)

@ Goat Justice - The high poly is a bunch of separate meshes crashed together. I was basically following this: http://wiki.polycount.com/TilingRockWallBeyer Although I have tried combining those meshes but I still get the same problem :(

[brandoom]

Try reset Xform?

It seems to solve all my problems..

[Jhburton]

@Brandoom - You mean in max? I'm not using max unfortunately :(

[brandoom]

Oh true, =\

should have looked a bit harder at the first image :P

[Dismembered]

Are you using a custom cage or the xNormal offset? I know when I wasn't using a custom cage I would get strange errors.

[Jhburton]

@dismembered - Im just using the default settings on xnormal, how do you change the cage?
I'll give it a go when I get home see if I can figure it out! Cheers for the responses guys!!

[EarthQuake]

The easiest thing to tweak is the Min and Max ray distance setting in the low poly tab, I'm guessing that messing with this will fix your issue. You can check the XN docs for more info on how to create a custom cage if you need to.

In the tools section you can run the ray distance calculator too.

[passerby]

in xnormal open the 3d viewer, and check off cage and give it a slight extrusion, than save that out as sbm.

should help a bit, using a basic cage like that over the ray distance.

also if your going to use raydistance, in the tools tab there is a ray distance calculator that can get you some decent starting values.

[Jhburton]

Hey Guys... still no luck with this issue :(. I decided to do another model and It worked out fine sdo its something to do with those meshes :S

[Quack!]

Are you using a cage?