Bake Normals and AO for a whole Character?

Feingeist · May 2015

Hey Guys,

I am wondering how I should proceed for baking normal maps and ao maps etc. for my character.

This is my high poly in zBrush:

It is made up of different subtools (arms, eyes, hair, bust, pants, shirt, socks, shoes etc.)

This is the retopology I did:

I am now wondering how I should proceed with baking. Should I make an envelope for each seperate part and bake each part seperatly or should I bake the whole character at once. I am wondering if the AO is wrong when I bake seperately etc.

Can you help me?

Cheers
FG :thumbup:

Tripl3M · May 2015

You can use Xnormal for bakings .. its pretty easy and fast.
Also for baking normals you bake each subtool separated for best details but for AO you bake them all at once.

Eric Chadwick · May 2015

Also we have a page on our wiki about baking, might help you.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Baking#Baking_Workflow

I think the shoes in your re-topo are too detailed. You won't be able to bake those shoelaces without a ton of overlap errors. Also they don't add much to the silhouette, so they're wasted detail. The shoelace loops however could stay, since they stick out a little.

Feingeist · May 2015

Hey Guys,

thanks for your replys! I now try to bake the normals seperately.

I have another issue now.

I hardened all the UV borders edges on my low poly in maya, created the envelope/cage and averaged the normals. Then I baked the normal in xnormal and applied it back to the low poly in maya which looks fine.

But as soon as I turn on smooth preview I see back the hard edges of the uv borders. Thats fatal because it is for a movie and we will render it in smooth preview.

can somebody help me on that problem?

Cheers FG

EarthQuake · May 2015

If you intend to sub-divide the mesh, you should bake your normal map from a sub-divided version. When you turn on smooth preview, you're changing the mesh geometry and normals which affects the normal map.

Feingeist · May 2015

Thanks earthquake for your info, but in the final the renderer will always render in maya mode 3 smooth preview.. so the map will show the seems again

I just tried not to use the hard uv borders script and use soft edges instead.. that seems to help on the matter.. but I fear to use the benefits of the hard uv border script which I forgot

Fingus · May 2015

If you bake a subdivided mesh it will match the smooth preview.

CharacterCarl · May 2015

As for your original question: You might consider baking two passes of AO. One "detail AO" set for the individual parts in isolation and one contact AO pass where you essentially bake the entire character from low-poly to low-poly (yes, that's right).
I still have to try it myself yet but by combining the two you'll ideally avoid overlapping errors and still maintain detail.
Hai Phan talks about it here: http://www.cgcircuit.com/course/3d-character-art-for-games-vi

.Wiki · May 2015

Feingeist wrote: »

I just tried not to use the hard uv borders script and use soft edges instead.. that seems to help on the matter.. but I fear to use the benefits of the hard uv border script which I forgot

Basically you don´t need hard edges at uv splits, you just need a uv-split at a hard edge when you bake normalmaps. And your mesh is really smooth so there should be no hard edges anyway.

Since you will render your mesh in maya anyway i would bake a displacement map out of xNormal. Just select hightmap and use its raw output. You will need to render it out as 32 bit floating point since it will have negative values and your "mid value" will be 0.

Feingeist · May 2015

.Wiki wrote: »

Basically you don´t need hard edges at uv splits, you just need a uv-split at a hard edge when you bake normalmaps. And your mesh is really smooth so there should be no hard edges anyway.

Since you will render your mesh in maya anyway i would bake a displacement map out of xNormal. Just select hightmap and use its raw output. You will need to render it out as 32 bit floating point since it will have negative values and your "mid value" will be 0.

What do you mean with 32 bit floating point? I assumed just rendering it as a tiff? because I have no other option on height map in xNormal :poly142:

I get strange lines on the map when I bake it. Although I subdivided the low poly one time on final resolution.

Do I need to subdivide it even more for displacement map baking?

.Wiki · May 2015

Feingeist wrote: »

What do you mean with 32 bit floating point?

Just type in .exr except of .tiff. This will change the output file type in xNormal.

Feingeist wrote: »

Do I need to subdivide it even more for displacement map baking?

Subdivide it the same amount as you do at rendertime. So 2-3 subdivisions should be fine.

Bake Normals and AO for a whole Character?

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