Ah, thanks for this. Shored up a lot of things for me.

Enodmi: Looks like you answered your own question before I could. =)

I approve of this thread!

The funny thing about it all is that the 'angled vs straight' thing is not only better for baking, it is better for in-game readability in general, since it will catch highlights much better, even at a distance.

Originally Posted by pior

The funny thing about it all is that the 'angled vs straight' thing is not only better for baking, it is better for in-game readability in general, since it will catch highlights much better, even at a distance.

Funny, this is what Per said when I showed him this thread. Slopes = more interesting highlights. It makes a lot of sense, because we have more variation in surface direction, instead of just the boring up down, left right, etc. You can see it clearly even with my simple little barrel test mesh, on A the highlight is always 1. on the thinly beveled edges or 2. on the "flat" cylindrical pieces uniformly. On B we've got much more variation in the direction, so much more interesting highlights.

Excellent.

Well I just wanted to say thanks to you EQ for not only posting this but all of your technical advice you give out. I always read your replies in other threads & their very thorough and informative.

As posted in jaxellers vehicle thread http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81116, I just want to drop this in here, as it seems relevant. If you don't need to turbosmooth your cylindrical shapes, then dont't! you're not getting anything out of baking a highres cylinder to a low res cylinder, other than wobbly shapes in your normal maps edges, if all you need is the chamfers, edgeloops and ridges of your cylinder then just add those and don't change the number of sides of the cylinder.

Example:

Except for the fact that the above example will look like a smoothed octagon from all angles, where the other will read like a cylinder depending on the angle.

Yeah I agree with ENODMI, I'd rather have my cylinder look like a cylinder sometimes than never, I used to do this a while back, but realised it was more trouble for a less pleasing result.

Right, just like you can paint your lines straight in photoshop, this only actually makes your asset look better from one very specific angle, a straight on side view. If your asset will always be viewed like that, then sure what the hell. However, if you'll view the asset from multple angles, or a different fixed angle, like a 3/4th view, it will virtually always look worse.


[edit] Few threads, this thread is basically an expanded version of the same stuff I keep posting in these threads...

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=65790
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=67479
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=999702

This is an image that I think is very important as well, for those who think beveling edges is the solution to waviness

Awesome.

Get this on the wiki you old dog!

NEVER

Don´t take away his pleasure answering the same Questions over and over again!

Holy moly. If it was my thread that helped inspire this then I'm glad I asked. Didn't expect to get so much help.

*throws his bra on stage*

Originally Posted by EarthQuake

This pretty much sums it up:



Certainly you can paint it out in photoshop, or tweak your cage(max) or render multiple bakes and composite them in photoshop, but be aware of the drawbacks. Its better to fully understand the problem, and try to fix it in the mesh first, as painting it out for instance becomes very difficult in more complex situations.

If you've got a simple cylindrical mesh, you know you'll never make any changes to it ever again, you can really do whatever you want. I never like to give advice that isn't sound technically and applicable to a wide variety of situations however.

As shown in a few other threads, painting out waviness can also result in a worse looking asset in some cases as well, depending on the viewing angle. I might do some more examples or just dig up those threads later.

The point of the thread isnt so much to say "ALWAYS DO THIS!" or "NEVER DO THAT!" but to share information and understanding, and challenge the way we work and think, so that you can come to your own conclusion as to when it is or isn't appropriate to do extra tweaks or whatever.

Yeah. I learned a lot of this stuff from making horrible bakes. And having to paint things out and composite, then realizing my mesh was terrible and having to start over on parts, then re-composite and paint.

I'm pretty done with reworking things. Why not do it right from the start? Reworking your art really, really sucks the fun out of it.

Great write ups! Lots of help for future work. Thanks.

Originally Posted by Super Happy Cow

Yeah. I learned a lot of this stuff from making horrible bakes. And having to paint things out and composite, then realizing my mesh was terrible and having to start over on parts, then re-composite and paint.

I'm pretty done with reworking things. Why not do it right from the start? Reworking your art really, really sucks the fun out of it.

Exactly, this is pretty much the evolution of my methods as well. When I started doing normal map stuff, oh about 7 years ago, it was an absolute mess. I had no idea what I was doing, no concept of how any of it worked and I would just throw random stuff together and hope it worked, painfully editing the results at the end when it didn't. The more you work the more you learn, and you realize that all of these problems are caused.... By you! Not because the software is bad(with the exception of smoothing errors, this is bad software 99% of the time). So, you can develop a wide array of methods to work, most of them taking the same amount of time, and producing a better result, and often cleaner and more efficient meshes as well.

Rework is my biggest enemy, and if I do need to make changes(as I do fairly often) I want it to be as painless as possible. So I always try to model "bake it and forget" types of meshes, that require little/no cleanup/rework. To me, when I bake the mesh, I'm done! Aside from tweaking AO wierdness or other such things.

Originally Posted by EarthQuake

Right, just like you can paint your lines straight in photoshop, this only actually makes your asset look better from one very specific angle, a straight on side view. If your asset will always be viewed like that, then sure what the hell. However, if you'll view the asset from multple angles, or a different fixed angle, like a 3/4th view, it will virtually always look worse.


[edit] Few threads, this thread is basically an expanded version of the same stuff I keep posting in these threads...

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=65790
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=67479
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=999702

This is an image that I think is very important as well, for those who think beveling edges is the solution to waviness

Ugh, been looking through simlar normal map threads to figure out what the hell is going on whenever I have to bake stuff; this sums it up nicely. I do have a question about this specific example though. Is it safe to say that the waviness is less in the far right cylinder because shape of the cylinder matches closer to the high poly? The top edge also looks nicer than I've ever been able to achieve; is that only from averaging the normals of the cage and having more sides?

Full of information I needed to know. Thank you so much EarthQuake!

This was some great information. I am still a rookie at modeling, high to low poly modeling in particular and I noticed that you mentioned creating a "model for your low", which I assume is a thread similar to this or perhaps a tutorial. Regardless, I'm having difficulty finding it. Could you post a link please? I would love to read it.

Usually when it's straight, it' just messes up the bi-normal directions, and emulating a hard edge in the low poly.

That can sometimes be a solution, but usually there's aliasing issues... particularly on consoles.




I think in Far Cry 2, the first person guns don't even have Normal Maps. They just used additional geometry.

Originally Posted by Bal

Yeah I agree with ENODMI, I'd rather have my cylinder look like a cylinder sometimes than never, I used to do this a while back, but realised it was more trouble for a less pleasing result.

Personally i dislike the dark edges you get on the rim of the object more where the baked normals thats shouldn't be visible are visible, but thats a matter of taste i guess.

Also getting round _enough_ rims on cars or barrels on guns in the first lod hasn't really been an issue in our engine on this generation.