The waviness will always be there, unless you match the resolution, which defeats the purpose. All you can do is minimize it. The best way to do this is to use more sides on your cylinder. If that takes you above the resolution you want to go, then you have to remove the triangles from other parts of the model.

Frankly, this asset is badly designed for normal mapping. It has a lot of 90 degree angles, and a ton of insets. The little cap on top has too much detail. And the proportions seem odd. You don't need so much detail for a single prop. Unless you are a housefly in the game, and the gameplay is all about flying up close around this barrel.

Originally Posted by Eric Chadwick

The waviness will always be there, unless you match the resolution, which defeats the purpose. All you can do is minimize it. The best way to do this is to use more sides on your cylinder. If that takes you above the resolution you want to go, then you have to remove the triangles from other parts of the model.

Frankly, this asset is badly designed for normal mapping. It has a lot of 90 degree angles, and a ton of insets. The little cap on top has too much detail. And the proportions seem odd. You don't need so much detail for a single prop. Unless you are a housefly in the game, and the gameplay is all about flying up close around this barrel.

There is actually only two 90 degree angles, the top and bottom edges, I know it has a lot of detail for one prop. That's fine, that's the point, I'm not even done with it yet. Like I said, it's not giving my waviness, that's not really the issue at that point, its that separation at the top of the barrel that I have pointed out in red. I understand more sides reduces waviness, I am not having waviness issues... I thought I was, but I want to fix the top, that's all. I want to keep the insets, I'm not worried about the polycount of the current prop, and as I said I don't have a strict limit at all. I just want nice smooth edges on the insets.

The top cap will be fine, I just want to know how to fix this top (pointed out in red) technically speaking, not talk about if my design is good enough, I have a ref, from Halo Reach, and this is a Halo mod, it has that detail, I'm adding that detail.

Not trying to sound like I don't want to listen to any advice, it's just that I want to leave those in, and I explained why. As for the sizes of everything, I agree, I will fix that.

The seam is probably because your rendering method uses a different tangent basis than your baking method. What software are you using to bake the normal map from the high? And what software and method are you using for rendering the normal-mapped lowpoly asset?

I'm using 3ds max, and I have the low and high matched and I'm just baking it, I guess, like I always do, I have never really had this issue. I have the scene file here. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/82963315/Barrels.max
It's messy, I pretty much dissected the scene 1000 times trying to figure this out.

What shader are you using on the lowpoly? Have you tried the 3Point Shader? http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=72861

@AlexCatMasterSupreme,

You might want to try scaling in the main body of your barrel so that it more closely matches the HP, as currently it's baking the gap between the HP and the LP, so you need to reduce that gap. Of course having more sides would reduce the gap, but it depends how many sides you want to use. I scaled it in by 1.5%.



I baked the scaled barrel and got these results when viewed in Marmomset and in Blender.

Marmoset


Blender 2.63


Map baked in xNormal 3.17.13


Also I have to agree with Eric that your mesh is really over the top for what it is. 1370 tris is pretty crazy for a barrel and you could get exactly the same visual result and if you are going to increase it to 30 side, then you are heading into the 2k range. Add the other 4 barrels and the metal strips and then that 2k becomes 8.5k or so, which is pretty nuts, especially when you could get the same visual result for much less than half of that (even with 30 sides).

I understand that this is for next gen cards and that geo is cheap, but there is no point in using polys just because you can. If you keep the same frugal mindset when it comes to materials and geometry as we all do for the current gen (with a little added) by only using the geometry that you need, then it means that you can add more objects and textures to make the next gen scenes even more amazing.

Anyway, it's your call...I just wanted to give my thoughts.

Originally Posted by AlexCatMasterSupreme

I'm using 3ds max, and I have the low and high matched and I'm just baking it, I guess, like I always do, I have never really had this issue. I have the scene file here. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/82963315/Barrels.max
It's messy, I pretty much dissected the scene 1000 times trying to figure this out.

Real quick Q: Baking with the cage, or "offset" method in max? If using offset, and if you have the top and bottom on separate smoothing groups, you'll get seams.

Originally Posted by EarthQuake

Real quick Q: Baking with the cage, or "offset" method in max? If using offset, and if you have the top and bottom on separate smoothing groups, you'll get seams.

He's baking with a cage by the looks of it, EQ.

Originally Posted by AlexCatMasterSupreme

I did try scaling it, and I thought that was the issue, but it never turned out right, but thanks a lot guys, seriously, and I know that it's a large polycount, and if it wasn't for this mod I wouldn't go over the top with the geo, but yeah, in this one case it's okay,Basically, the point of the project is to see how far we can push Cryengine with cards coming out in the next year or two, not really to make it playable on even a 2000 dollar machine. I'm going to work on the design some more, but now that I know for sure what the issue is I feel a lot better, it was really irritating me.

So thanks very very much guys. I'm gunna go get on it right now

Ahh, cool

Have fun with the mod!

Would just like to thank once again to EQ and other contributors for this thread. From time to time I keep coming back and slap my forehead.

Cheers

Hey guys I have a quick question somewhat related to this subject:

What are peoples views on bumping up polycounts for portfolio peices. By adding a couple of loops I can get a good bake, but by adding a bunch I can get something indistinguishable from the high poly. For a 'hero prop' where the goal is something closer to a study, should I just throw polycounts out the window?

fearian: The key is to make good use of the tris, regardless of how many of them there are.

Obviously; but in a portfolio setting, where do you draw the line? I could add geo that does nothing for the silhouette of an object, but merely makes a surface shade flat rather than *slightly* rounded. is this just being anal? The bake was good enough for production before, and going into this kind of perfectionism across the board will take a large model from 7k to 10k.

in my experience an extremely clean bake will outweigh tricount for portfolios. most of the times once you add edges to get your bake looking like you want it, you can figure out where to remove geo to keep the tricount down. a flawless bake can often be only a few hundred more tris, or even the same amount as budgeted.

designing your model for baking is a huge part too.

Originally Posted by fearian

Obviously; but in a portfolio setting, where do you draw the line? I could add geo that does nothing for the silhouette of an object, but merely makes a surface shade flat rather than *slightly* rounded. is this just being anal? The bake was good enough for production before, and going into this kind of perfectionism across the board will take a large model from 7k to 10k.

Hmm. Not so obvious, I'd say. It's a simple statement, but it means a lot, and I think it answers your question.

About being anal: "slightly" is very subjective. Would it detract from the appreciation of the asset by a game player, after compression and all other effects are added? Well, you know where I'm going with this. Common sense stuff, etc.

Hard to discuss specifics without seeing a specific asset design

Originally Posted by fearian

Obviously; but in a portfolio setting, where do you draw the line? I could add geo that does nothing for the silhouette of an object, but merely makes a surface shade flat rather than *slightly* rounded. is this just being anal? The bake was good enough for production before, and going into this kind of perfectionism across the board will take a large model from 7k to 10k.

Just try and be proportionate with the extra geometry that you are adding. Increasing a models tri count by 50% to make it *slightly* better is probably a bit over the top and depending on the object you could most likely get the same effect by making a separate smoothing group from that part with only the cost of the extra verts. around the edge, which might be cheaper.

Add more tris because you need them, not because you can add more tris.

Thanks guys. I think in my case it is totally over the top, given the cost to result ratio. I'll be posting new screens soon in my wip thread, but I'm making a lowpoly and bake for this vault door I did. Loooots of cylinders to play with

I want to make sure I'm understanding out to make a cage for xnormal for a cylinder-ish shaped. I just take the lowpoly and edit it to be a cylinder that has flat sides? Or can it be any mesh, I believe it'd need to have the same UV's as the low poly. I'd also assume it'd need to be pushed, correct?

Basically I'm baking a bottle, which should be similar enough to that camera example on the wiki.

Originally Posted by ZacD

I want to make sure I'm understanding out to make a cage for xnormal for a cylinder-ish shaped. I just take the lowpoly and edit it to be a cylinder that has flat sides? Or can it be any mesh, I believe it'd need to have the same UV's as the low poly. I'd also assume it'd need to be pushed, correct?

Basically I'm baking a bottle, which should be similar enough to that camera example on the wiki.

If you are using a custom cage (an exported mesh) in xNormal you will need to have exactly the same topology and vert index/count for the cage to work or it won't let you bake.
You can use the cage feature in xNormal though (in the 3d viewer) and edit it how you like, though if you are trying to remove waviness, you would be better just adding more sides to your low poly.

Okay, cool, I'll just duplicate the lowpoly, shrinkwrap it to a cylinder, and call it done.

if you paint it straight.

Just a quick question regarding cages in Maya.

I have read multiple times that in Maya you can not adjust the cage, apart from just moving it along its normals. Though I have edited a cage in Maya multiple times, how I would edit a normal mesh. Am I missing something here? Maybe I just remember things not accurately.

Afaik a cage is simply a duplicate of the mesh, kinda like a blend shape, with just different vertex positions right?
So you could just use the default Maya cage method and export that mesh for xNormal, instead of manually duplicating your mesh and what not. Though I must say that I have not tried baking with an edited cage in Maya.. as in Maya baking takes a damn long time and I just didnt have the patience/time to wait for it to finish. (Didn't set up a simple test scene, was trying to bake a project mesh)

Originally Posted by bb0x

Afaik a cage is simply a duplicate of the mesh, kinda like a blend shape, with just different vertex positions right?

In addition to that, it should have all soft edges only (in Max terms, only 1 smoothing group).

Originally Posted by bb0x

So you could just use the default Maya cage method and export that mesh for xNormal, instead of manually duplicating your mesh and what not.

I've not used the Maya Transfer Map since forever so I wouldn't know how the envelope for that work, but you cannot use your game-res mesh as a cage also for xNormal because it has explicit normals, and as far as I know, xNormal does not have a function to modify the cage's normals prior to baking.

Hi!

Please take a look at this image:


Help me understand how this stuff works... I think I'm too dumb to understand the tutorial in this topic. Do I understand correctly that I absolutely need to add extra edges on the low poly around the area where the inset screens are so they don't wave like that in the normal map? No other way?
Also, all the edges are smooth on the low poly (in Max terms that would mean that all faces are part of the same smoothing group, I think) so the 90 degrees edges bake correctly. Is this the only way to correctly bake 90 degrees edges?

And I don't understand the thing about separating UV islands.. doing that with hard 90 degrees edges still gave me seams on those edges. Only way I could fix it was by smoothing them.