Keytay

yes but the seams are from the tiles/canvas not on the models (they're fine). This is a 2048 normal map zoomed in to show the seams from canvas.

Were your color maps the correct colors too ajz? My tests were 1024 so perhaps the seams in the normal were due to that.

Thanks Andrew, that's awesome! I did a quick test and it's a much much smoother process now and it bakes the textures very quickly. There were no seams on the normal where the models were but there were fine seams where the instance tiles meet the center one. It would be fine if the canvas edges were covered in models though. The color texture seems to export with the wrong colors ie. Red was exported as blue. I'll play with it in more detail and come back with any questions. Thanks again! Is it possible to do AO with this procedure?

Right, gotcha. works perfectly fine for me. Thanks for the explanation. Yes it returns to the viewport (after freezing for a second). Did you perhaps UV your new topo plane when you imported it? I tried your scene and it works as it should, thanks for that. Also I was wondering about the seam issue and had a close look at the tiles that Andrew uploaded. They're overlapping and they also have rounded edges (which is understandable) perhaps this could be contributing to the seam. Unless of course the overlapping is deliberate to cover the round edges?

So to place a textured leaf you would make it a surface, paint it and then back in the voxel room clone it around the canvas? It would be great if you could pull in pre-textured models into the voxel room but can't have everything I guess. Also, I've been trying your method in the video but I don't get past the section where you Retopo/merge with NM. I get the first dialog box that you get "You are about to bake a normal but it does not contain depth" etc. I hit ok but nothing happens, the next dialog that you get doesn't appear. I've followed your video precisely as well. I've tried with the original scene from Andrew and the scene I uploaded that you used. Maybe something in the preference I need to tick? I'm using the demo version 3.7.18F1

Again, a big thank you for taking the time to do this great video!! You Sir deserve a medal! I must say it's really very promising and very quick to get the actual map out of 3dc, the only major downfall is the destruction of the map in PS to clean it up. But if Andrew can work out a way to get them seamless from the get go and stop any chipping then it's a winner. The normal map at the end worked very well I must say. Oh one thing I forgot to ask earlier about this, is it possible to place pre painted/textured models in the voxel room (Like in the ZB video)? ie. If we wanted to place twigs, pebbles, leaves, etc for a tiled ground. Are they always white and have to be painted after the fact as a whole. Sorry this is probably a really dumb question for you 3dc gurus.

Thanks for looking into it Andrew that sounds great! Will it be possible to bake AO as well? Thanks so much for that Ajz3d.

Thank you ajz3d you have helped enormously. Cheers for watching the video and understanding what I'm trying to do, also for the effort you've gone to to find a workaround, I really appreciate it. I guess the big question is, does your normal map etc have any seams at all? As fixing those on highly detailed textures would be next to impossible in photoshop etc. . If it's not too much trouble a video would be excellent, if not just for me but all the others out there who don't know this is possible in 3DC. It's also a big plus for 3dc, especially for game/environment artists like myself. You'd probably get a hell of a lot of hits on youtube too. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No, I'm not confused. I have already said in this thread I'm not wanting displacement. I seriously don't know why everyone is talking about displacement. I have said I'm after a tileable normal map, diffuse and AO. No that's right you didn't see that in the video because I was showing you baking from high poly terrain with a flat plane as the low poly to get an AO, Normal (not displacement) and diffuse etc out of Mudbox. The example I'm showing is a guy doing exactly what I've been talking about, minus the tiling.

Oops sorry about that

Thanks Alvordr I'll have a look at PixPlant.

I mentioned it was for games because in games you can get very close to them, move around them - real time lighting, day & night cycles etc really show them up. If they're spat out from CB then they're not correct and look amateur. Nothing comes close to a normal map being made from high res and it works for ground textures just as well (if you can get them tiling with no seams or glitches from the program) ps. I'm not trying to displace geo it's just the textures I'm after (diffuse, AO, Normal, and a cavity/highlight map) but Diffuse and Normal would do for now. I then put these together to create the complete Diffuse and the Normal is already done. And yes they're for terrain textures in a game, it's a game art technique.

In this video (not mine) go to 1:02:00, he imports a plane (I know its a plane because he exports it from maya at the very start of part one) and he bakes an AO and others using the High poly (terrain) and the flat plane. Keep in mind I only after textures, I don't need a low poly retopo'd displaced object. Thanks Andrew. It's the same scene you gave me with some voxel objects. http://www.mediafire.com/?0gd9iwfljd73qpb

You get way better normal maps and AO etc if you create a ground texture with 3d elements. Crazy etc are great for getting quick dirty normal maps from photos/textures but they aren't correct at all. This is for games btw. If you haven't seen this vid check it out and you'll see how amazing ground textures can be using this method. Also I do have a retopo mesh in the scene, the green plane which I tried moving up and down, expanding the cage from 150 to 4000. Cheers Abnranger, I've seen that video and have been using those parameters to try and raise the cage (but instead of raising it like in the video it expands it above and below - see pic) and have also tried raising the retopo plane with the transform but its giving even worse results (the nasty normal map in the image) I'm familiar with Max baking also MubBox. Baking to a plane In mudbox you would put the high res model above and the plane below and bake but it doesn't do the tiling thing that ZB and 3DC can do. If anyone gets a chance please try the scene in the op. Throw down some geo and see if you can get any results. I'm sure you guys would know what I'm doing wrong as soon as you try it.

Thanks for the links Alvordr. I was going through the pilgway/youtube and others before I decided to see if 3DC could do this particular thing. I certainly have jumped into the deep end but I'm evaluating the program (with little time) to see if it will do what I need it to. Unfortunately this particular procedure seems to be untouched in the community with no examples anywhere, that I can find so I had to give it a go myself, albeit prematurely. Tony, the topolgy is a plane that Andrew put in there that's the same size and depth as the middle plane in the voxel room. I gathered it was like baking a high poly down to a low poly and the scan depth was similar to a cage. In the side view I scaled the scan depth so it was engulfing the rocks. I'd show you a pic but the scene crashed and I lost it. I did try an autopo but the baked textures were the just uv layout not a tileable top down render. Thanks for the help though I appreciate it.

Thanks for the reply Tony. I'm not sure I get what you mean though. Could you explain in a little more detail? ps. I have tried many scan depth variations and this is about as good as it gets.