Baking normal maps.
Hi,
I am having some performance problems importing many hi poly meshes into 3D max to bake my models and tiling textures. I currently have many bricks, slabs and tiles of 200k to 400k polygons ready to be organized together and baked on models and flat planes as textures.
But when I want to create a texture from say 20 blocks (around 6.000.000 polygons) max already starts to get hick-ups. The problems starts when I want to bake the AO map and have to copy many more stones to the sides for correct lighting.
I have a 3.4Ghz Phenom II X4 with GeForce GTX 460 and 8GB ram. It's a bit old already but 10 million polygons is not all that much. Do i need to upgrade for these amounts? I would love to work with another division on my high poly but since I'm already having issues this will cause problems. A realistic wall counts many bricks so i'm really limited to what I can do.
Are there any techniques to make the process of arranging stones more efficient? Or perhaps applications to do this job?
I am having some performance problems importing many hi poly meshes into 3D max to bake my models and tiling textures. I currently have many bricks, slabs and tiles of 200k to 400k polygons ready to be organized together and baked on models and flat planes as textures.
But when I want to create a texture from say 20 blocks (around 6.000.000 polygons) max already starts to get hick-ups. The problems starts when I want to bake the AO map and have to copy many more stones to the sides for correct lighting.
I have a 3.4Ghz Phenom II X4 with GeForce GTX 460 and 8GB ram. It's a bit old already but 10 million polygons is not all that much. Do i need to upgrade for these amounts? I would love to work with another division on my high poly but since I'm already having issues this will cause problems. A realistic wall counts many bricks so i'm really limited to what I can do.
Are there any techniques to make the process of arranging stones more efficient? Or perhaps applications to do this job?
Replies
If so, try a polygon reducer like decimation master to get each brick down to a reasonable polycount. Often when sculpting you can create details that are sub-pixel in size and are unnecessary for the baking process.
Outside of that, your computer is fairly slow to handle 10 million polys. You can try changing 3dsmax viewport settings, directx or nitrous, as one can be faster then the other depending on your computer setup.
You can also right click on an object and choose to display that object as a box, so you can place it without having to display its polys.
You can also try placing the bricks in a sculpting app like zbrush, which are generally better at handling tons of polys, and then exporting that and baking in an external baker like xnormal.
Your last option sounds very good but I'm not that familiar with ZBrush and cannot seem to bake a normal map that way, I can do that just for a single object/tool. I have tried unwrapping low poly objects (even flat ones) and overlaying tools in ZBrush but I cannot get a normal map from it.
I don't think you'll easily get a PC where Max isn't suffering under a 6mil poly load.
Or you could try proxies I guess? http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/12/ENU/3ds%20Max%202010%20Tutorials/files/WS1a9193826455f5ff-4855151011e1d0ec60d611d.htm
I did try instancing the same objects and it seems to help a lot but still not enough for a high detailed brick wall. I'm unfamiliar with proxies and will take a look at that.