Cavity vs Curvature maps
So, for a long time I always referred to both these images as cavity maps, or should the second, more grayish one actually be called curvature map, since it has both cavities and outward edges highlighted?
The reason i never referred to gray map as curvature is because I've also seen this referred to as curvature map, which makes more sense:
I guess my question is: what's the correct name I can use for each one to prevent confusion?
The reason i never referred to gray map as curvature is because I've also seen this referred to as curvature map, which makes more sense:
I guess my question is: what's the correct name I can use for each one to prevent confusion?
Replies
What I've always wondered is if there's another way do do it, namely, without the need of a low poly model?
Was just thinking it would be nice to have a high poly model with UVs that I can somewhat texture with the aid of this map, say in Ddo or Substance Designer, without needing to retopo and go through the normal map baking first.
Or am i just dreaming.
Second one is, uhh its sort of weird and not really "correct", its the thing you can get out of crazybump where gray is neutral and darks are cavity and whites are convexity, this map is hard to work with
Bottom one is a curvature map where each channel contains different information, like convexity in red and concavity in green for instance, generally more useful
Also, merged both of your threads as they appeared to be about the same topic.
Ty, and you are correct about the second one, however, what do you call it?
Bartalon, yeah its technically a curvature map I guess, but with both convexity and concavity baked into a single channel.
Highpoly, no UVs:
- Vertex colors: bake in max with http://www.rpmanager.com/plugins/TensionMod.htm
- Zbrush polypaint: bake to vertex color via masking
High to low, UVs:
- Xnormal, bake curvature
- convert tangent space normal to curvature
Highpoly, with UVs:
- Use vertex colors from step 1 and bake to texture in 3dsMax
- PolySurfaceCurvature from the ideascale node pack in MARI
2 is indeed the exact same thing as 3, but coded in one channel instead of 2.
What you need to do is make two copies of the content in photoshop, and then use a curves layer to isolate the highlights (over 128 ), and then a levels layer to fill the range. Do the same with the shadows but isolate under 128.
Here's a psd you can use to do the same thing: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/499159/concavityconvexitysplit.psd
There, now you have two easy to use maps, one (convexity) for creating masks for edgewear and the like, and another (concavity) great for dust and dirt.
Yep, I do this as well, or rather I usually let dDo generate it.
The biggest problem with doing this vs baking it from a highpoly is that if your normal map has a lot of high contrast gradients to account for the lowpoly smoothing, the resulting maps won't be very accurate. This is generally more of an issue with hard surface stuff where you have a flat surface that is represented with various gradients to account for the lowpoly mesh normals, and less of an issue for organics. What you get then is those gradients baked into the curvature map which can be a pain to work around.
At least with flat Hard surface models, Ive had the best results letting Ddo create it's own curvature map, which I assume is similar to the one baked with Ndo. Ddo edge detection didn't seem to work very well with a higher depth and gradient filled curvature map, like the ones baked from a HighPoly with xnormal in monochrome mode. I expected it to be the other way around.
The reason I was asking about baking a curvature map for just a high poly was to be able to do some texturing in Ddo, with light wear effects utilizing edge detection.