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Ungoliant's mapping questions


ungoliant

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i suppose i could try just using the universal normal only for skins, but if it looks like trash on certain textures, i wouldn't have much of a choice, other than to just not skin that material.

 

yeah i've watched a couple tut videos, i'll stick with obj. exported quickly from blender, too. there's quite a few obj export settings from blender though, i'll have to play around. I think I can get away with exporting the highpoly without the uv map and materials, saves a crap ton of space. I exported the lowpoly with default settings, and the lowpoly obj is now larger than the highpoly...? weird.

now if i can just get the damn xnormal WORKING....

Edited by ungoliant
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yeah i've watched a couple tut videos, i'll stick with obj. exported quickly from blender, too. there's quite a few obj export settings from blender though, i'll have to play around. I think I can get away with exporting the highpoly without the uv map and materials, saves a crap ton of space. I exported the lowpoly with default settings, and the lowpoly obj is now larger than the highpoly...? weird.

now if i can just get the damn xnormal WORKING....

OBJ is what I'm using as well. If the lowpoly is larger than the highpoly then you probably forgot to check "selection only" (or something along those lines) when you exported. It's stupid really, that you need to check that every time as it should be default but that's just the way it is.

 

I'd recommend baking out normal and AO maps (obviously), but also cavity, wireframe (turn off ray-fails) and curvature (three-colored) maps. The cavity map is similiar to AO, but it's better at picking up smaller detasls, the wireframe would just serve as a guide and the curvature can be used for adding some nice edge highlights (I think those are stored in the green channel, this texture is essentially three different ones stored in each RGB channel). Then you can just combine those with the AO map and you're done.

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you probably forgot to check "selection only" (or something along those lines) when you exported. It's stupid really, that you need to check that every time as it should be default but that's just the way it is.

you were right, user error per normal.

 

I'm working on making a new lowpoly with meshlab, its pretty cool. But i'm starting to become convinced that my problem with UV's and seams is stemming from being too lowpoly. theres just not enough room for detail that the model needs. 1200 polys makes it look worlds better, but I don't know if that is acceptable or not. maybe with a lower poly shadowmesh, this is ok?

I think the shadowmesh could be much lower, like 250-300, because i can worry about contour and not concavity, with noselfshadow set on.

Edited by ungoliant
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I changed my mind about the 1200 polys. it looks better on the mesh, but I baked an AO and normal for it and stood it up up next to the 400 poly in D3, and I cannot tell the damn difference except for the seam stands out a bit on the 400. I dunno, maybe ill spend some time trying to rework the seam on the 400, and see if i can get it looking right.

Edited by ungoliant
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I changed my mind about the 1200 polys. it looks better on the mesh, but I baked an AO and normal for it and stood it up up next to the 400 poly in D3, and I cannot tell the damn difference except for the seam stands out a bit on the 400. I dunno, maybe ill spend some time trying to rework the seam on the 400, and see if i can get it looking right.

Here's three better solutions for the unwrapping (I'd probably go with the middle one):

unwrap.png

First one is one single seam and then just U->Unwrap. Second is just a Cylinder projection from the side (it'll require some extra work but it is the most texel efficient). Third is the same as the first one but with 2 seams. If you'll just use a rectangular texture these will be more efficient.

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First one is one single seam and then just U->Unwrap. Second is just a Cylinder projection from the side (it'll require some extra work but it is the most texel efficient). Third is the same as the first one but with 2 seams. If you'll just use a rectangular texture these will be more efficient.

I've tried the cylinder project, from the side and the top. you have no idea the unbelievable rats nest of shit it creates, and its also very tall and narrow.

I did get the new 1200 poly working with 1 horizontal seam, and 1 vertical seam. vert is much harder to hide, and the upper 2 tiers of the model have massive area stretching (angle stretching was fine), so i had to make them into its own island and scale up the size of it. result is most of the model in 1 island, and a small island thrown in. This worked fine for the 1200 poly, plans for today are to try to get it working for the 400 poly, and then proceed to xnormal.

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this is from the new unwrap of the 1200 poly, hopefully i can get similar results with the 400.

 

aomeshlab.jpg

 

the blender baking artifacts are really starting to grate on me. hopefully xnormal can clear all of that up.

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wowwwww, xnormal bakes like a damn dream. However, some of these textures being baked are like 4MB. is that something i should deal with in photoshop, or the xnormal settings? or just leave it alone?

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wowwwww, xnormal bakes like a damn dream. However, some of these textures being baked are like 4MB. is that something i should deal with in photoshop, or the xnormal settings? or just leave it alone?

Why are you worrying about 4MB files? ATM I am working on a huge texture (4096*4096 pixels, I always work in 2x the final resolution with all my maps in one document) that takes about 500 MB and that is when you should start to worry. 4MB are nothing. You're lucky that it's only 4 MB. I guess you could maybe bake out to png to save more space.

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Normal maps will probably be dds at some point too. It's actually being discussed whether or not that's a 1.08 change. Has something to do with renderer yadyyada...

 

So right now they are space hogs, but hopefully that will be solved soon enough to save on mod bloat and load times.

 

Why are you even unwrapping the high poly- it's not going in game right? Just unwrap the low, bake.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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I wish to make a heightmap that will appear seamlessly on my lowpoly model, which I suspect will involve the generated heightmap to be placed on the highpoly and baked onto the lowpoly so that it utilizes the UV map. How can I achieve this in Blender? (i have a feeling the answer is staring me in the face). I wish the heightmap to be exported as a standalone uv-mapped image for export to Xnormal where I will combine it with my existing normal map.

 

edit: if the proper way involves baking a displacement map, I am having trouble getting it to work in any capacity.

 

edit: i'd love to NOT do this in blender, but its image generation capability is the only way I know to make heightmaps out of thin air, and I cannot find a way to export the generated image by itself.

Edited by ungoliant
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just for reference, this is a rendered image of basically what I want (or something similar) using a displacement image on the highpoly. Thus far I can't find a way to get the desired results exported to an image mapped onto the lowpoly uv's.

heightl.jpg

 

And this looks about 1000x better than using the displacement modifier btw. i can't get anything to look good on that thing, and the next multires step is 1.7 mil polys, which my system cannot handle.

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that unwrap and AO is from the lowpoly.

 

hmm, you said it was the 1200 poly and you were hoping for good results on the 400, so I'm confused.

 

Just seems like you are going about this wrong.

 

 

 

I wish to make a heightmap that will appear seamlessly on my lowpoly model, which I suspect will involve the generated heightmap to be placed on the highpoly and baked onto the lowpoly so that it utilizes the UV map. How can I achieve this in Blender? (i have a feeling the answer is staring me in the face). I wish the heightmap to be exported as a standalone uv-mapped image for export to Xnormal where I will combine it with my existing normal map.

 

edit: if the proper way involves baking a displacement map, I am having trouble getting it to work in any capacity.

 

edit: i'd love to NOT do this in blender, but its image generation capability is the only way I know to make heightmaps out of thin air, and I cannot find a way to export the generated image by itself.

 

-edit

You basically are trying to bake a diffuse map doing the height like that.

--

 

You only need 1 UV map. The map that will be on your final object. The uv's from a high don't transfer to your low, only the model details. And they transfer according to the low poly unwrap.

 

You'll never get a seamless diffuse from a stock texture unless your uvmap hit's the edges of the texture (ie: a column can easily be seamless, a cone can't without stretching).

 

But any baked texture should be seamless. I think going with a height and a normal is overkill. You're just adding an extra render pass to the model. Drawcalls are expensive, and for what, tiny details that can just be put into the normal map (either through baking them or overlay in photoshop).

 

 

Make your 1200, unwrap it good. Then just decimate that mesh (leaving the seam edges untouched) for lower poly versions. Bake the texture to the highest poly in game model from an non-uvmapped high.

 

Try to put the seam on the game model in as many recesses as you can to hide it better. aIn the pic above if you go down the left side you can have it go into all those holes, then it'll be masked by the ao shadows and in game dark spots best.

 

The high poly looks great, but honestly don't kill yourself over it. I've got nothing wrong with having pride and trying to do a good job, but professionals don't kill themselves. Valve is one of the top companies, and I look at their assets in game all the time, and believe me, if you look closely there are errors EVERYWHERE. seams, mis-alignments, etc...

 

And you'll never be able to hide the obvious stock texture seams with some materials anyway.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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nooooo, i was experimenting previously with making a 1200 lowpoly model instead of a 400 lowpoly model. It is gone, deleted, please disregard all references to a 1200 poly model. Do you seriously think those screenshots came out of 1200 polys? lol!!! my highpoly is 350K. my highpoly does not have a UV map. Also, the heightmap is not part of the diffuse, the texture is influencing the displacement of the geometry itself, not diffuse, and the shadows in the shot bare witness to that fact. i made sure to include that on the screenshot in the texture context of the properties panel to be double sure that i conveyed that point properly.

 

sorry, not trying to jump all over you, there. I know you said you're not a blender person. But one last point, in a fullscreen blender screenshot like the one above, you can check the polycount of the visible scene with the FA:xxxxxxx number at the top of the shot, this alludes to "faces", in this case, 344K quads.

 

I think going with a height and a normal is overkill. You're just adding an extra render pass to the model. Drawcalls are expensive, and for what, tiny details that can just be put into the normal map

 

One last thing, this is, indeed, my exact plan. I need the heightmap exported out of blender so that I can rebake my normalmap in xnormal utilizing the new heightmap, so that all the detail i desire is part of a single normal map.

Edited by ungoliant
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nooooo, i was experimenting previously with making a 1200 lowpoly model instead of a 400 lowpoly model. It is gone, deleted, please disregard all references to a 1200 poly model. Do you seriously think those screenshots came out of 1200 polys? lol!!! my highpoly is 350K. my highpoly does not have a UV map. Also, the heightmap is not part of the diffuse, the texture is influencing the displacement of the geometry itself, not diffuse, and the shadows in the shot bare witness to that fact. i made sure to include that on the screenshot in the texture context of the properties panel to be double sure that i conveyed that point properly.

 

sorry, not trying to jump all over you, there. I know you said you're not a blender person. But one last point, in a fullscreen blender screenshot like the one above, you can check the polycount of the visible scene with the FA:xxxxxxx number at the top of the shot, this alludes to "faces", in this case, 344K quads.

 

 

 

One last thing, this is, indeed, my exact plan. I need the heightmap exported out of blender so that I can rebake my normalmap in xnormal utilizing the new heightmap, so that all the detail i desire is part of a single normal map.

 

No I did not seriously think that was a 1200 poly model. In your post you said exactly what I quoted. A 1200 a 400 poly models. Never said anything about getting rid of the 1200.

 

But as far as I know you are doing LOD stages correct? So having a 1200 and a 400 DOES make sense, and maybe even a 200. But you can only use one uv sheet for all models. It sounded like you were unwrapping both seperately so that wouldn't work well.

 

Anyway, you'll get a better bake onto a 1200 that you can decimate into lower poly LOD's then if you bake onto the 400 anyway.

--------

 

I still don't see a need to add a height map to a hi to bake down. Why not just make it seamless on your highest in game model. Then overlay that onto the normal baked down from your 'high'.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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I still don't see a need to add a height map to a hi to bake down. Why not just make it seamless on your highest in game model. Then overlay that onto the normal baked down from your 'high'.

this is confusing the daylights out of me. I don't see a way to make it seamless to any level of lowpoly unless it starts at the next tier up and is baked down (from the high poly -> highest low poly [in the case of LOD, which does not currently exist]).

Anyway, you'll get a better bake onto a 1200 that you can decimate into lower poly LOD's then if you bake onto the 400 anyway.

?!?! whaaaa??? OK i want to clear up one last thing, because i think there might still be a gap in communication. If there is no LOD, it will be 400 poly. If there is LOD, 400 poly will be the highest of the low polys. the 1200 i made gave almost absolutely no visual benefit, even up close, so it is out of the picture.

 

also, before i ever get around to LOD, tels unintentionally gave me the inspiration for my next mini-project with this model, which is to give the mapper direct influence over the coloring of the diffuse via _color spawnarg, so it can be tinted to the mappers preference. thats not a substitute for skins, there will be multiples of those as well. Because of my AO stage being separate from the actual diffuse, i believe i can completely avoid this method from tinting the AO/convexity/curvature/whateverthafuk map that will be overlayed onto it.

Edited by ungoliant
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I found this video

 

It shows how to bake a displacement to a normal map. However I think you still will need two bakes.

 

1- bake your sculpt to the low poly uv (for your normals)

2- bake the displacement to the lowpoly (for height details)

3- overlay the height details in photoshop onto the normals. Save and normalize as your final normal map.

 

I didn't find anything for baking displacements AND normals at the same time. Maybe the above video will work all at once, don't know.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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watched it, I don't think this video helps me. As far as baking a heightmap and normalmap at the same time, I already know how to do this in xnormal, its totally possible. Highpoly + fine detail -> bake.

What I need is the actual height map reorganized to the uv's of the lowpoly, and then exported, so i can input that into the 'fine detail' option in xnormal. how to obtain this uv'd heightmap??? i dunno...

 

you know, xnormal might even have a way to do this, i'm not sure. but i still need that generated image from blender.

Edited by ungoliant
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yeah, you cant bake the uv's down.

 

the only way I can see that working is to make your game model. Uv it. Then clone, increase the density and sculpt the mesh. Putting the displacement on it. Then it is already uv'ed to the coords of the game model.

 

increasing the density won't change the coordinates. Only decimating a seam will change the coords when you go up/down in detals.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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I'm not convinced. I had very bad results with the displacement bake in blender, but i'm pretty sure that it was designed to give me what i'm looking for. if xnormal has something similar to the displacement bake, I should be cool, as long as i can find a way to export a flat generated image from blender.

 

Wait, I think thats the key to this whole thing. xnormal bakes everything from highpoly to lowpoly. highpoly doesn't need uv coordinates, hence, if i'm putting that heightmap onto the highpoly to bake to the lowpoly along with the normal map at the same time..... I do not need the heightmap to be mapped to the lowpoly uv's????!!! i just need that stupid generated blender image!!!! someone tell me how to export one of those damn things, cuz i don't know how!

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