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V4.1 BETA (experimental 4.1.17D)


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The sphere can be resized using right mouse drag...I see that now. However, it also let me move verts by accident, as the "Move vertices" tool was active. Those tools need to all be inactive while using the bake settings.

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I just can't get the hang of this. I still can't adjust the ray casting length per zone, so I can either cast rays at a length for the whole thing, where most of it works, but I can't get this working for the zones. I either get artifacts or black areas, depending on my zone size and for the ray casting length.

If anyone has a good feel for this, please assist.

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I just can't get the hang of this. I still can't adjust the ray casting length per zone, so I can either cast rays at a length for the whole thing, where most of it works, but I can't get this working for the zones. I either get artifacts or black areas, depending on my zone size and for the ray casting length.

If anyone has a good feel for this, please assist.

Seems some problems still exist there, I found them on more complex tests, I will correct and re-upload.

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  • Contributor

- You need to put influence sphere inside the retopo mesh. Only then tweaking in/out depths will be visible and the object will actually influence the mesh.

I have to correct myself. The sphere doesn't need to be placed inside the retopo mesh. If sphere's diameter length is enough to intersect in circa one-thirds of its length with the retopo mesh, then the retopo mesh will be attracted by the influence object.

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Wow, Andrew, you've been very busy. (...)

Yup. Those three bugs I reported for example... I was receiving "Resolved" e-mail notifications from Mantis coming into my phone almost one after another.

At that moment I imagined Andrew sitting in a dark office room with his monitor as the only light source (because there's no need for a three point lighting, right?). The display projecting a bright, green lines of code onto his tired face. The office is silent. A strong scent of freshly made coffee floats in the air... Andrew makes a slight move with his wrist and immediately afterwards a loud mouse-click echoes throughout the chamber. The Mantis page has loaded. He holds his breath for a moment to ponder over the text he has just read. The pause is short though, because he now stretches his arms and places his palms on the keyboard. With a passion of Chopin and Brahms, he depresses the keys on the keyboard just like they did on their pianos. The movement of his fingers gaining in speed. The final étude begins...

:)

Thanks Andrew for fixing the bugs. I just downloaded the 13A and can't wait to try it out.

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  • Advanced Member

Andrew, one other thing I'm noticing in 13A is that the symmetry along X when used with the Tinker models sometimes doesn't work right. I can add a part on one side some distance from the middle and hit apply, but the other side's mirrored model is deformed.

Not sure if this was a problem before, as I'm just starting to experiment with the Tinker models.

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  • Advanced Member

Updated to 13A to fix mentioned problems of baking + problems found by me. Now it should work well.

I couldn't find this sphere of influence control that everyone has mentioned here. But I did notice a "PreferOuterDetails" checkbox in the Texture Baking Tool and that worked GREAT! That was EXACTLY what I was after! Thank you for fixing my example scene and making this work! This will make 3DCoat much more useful for game asset creation! I'll keep running it through its paces - but it looks amazing so far with this checkbox on.

EDIT: There may me a few slight issues with how the spec bakes - making seams and such. Also need to see if the normal is baking inverted - I will try and see if I can reproduce this. The color/difuse baking seems to working perfectly though!

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Thank you, that clears a lot up. :)

However, I still have a question. Why would I use Merge with NMap from Retopo room instead of Texture Baking Tool window with PreferOuterDetails? If I want to bake high res color,normal, & spec to separate low poly mesh (which is external) which do I use? Or should I load external mesh as Retopo mesh and use the former method? (Also, if so, I need to confirm that loading as Retopo Mesh does not strip weight maps or anything - baking to external does not, so I've been using that method)...

I guess I am a little confused why there are 2 methods to do the same thing and when to use which...?

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Thank you, that clears a lot up. :)

However, I still have a question. Why would I use Merge with NMap from Retopo room instead of Texture Baking Tool window with PreferOuterDetails? If I want to bake high res color,normal, & spec to separate low poly mesh (which is external) which do I use? Or should I load external mesh as Retopo mesh and use the former method? (Also, if so, I need to confirm that loading as Retopo Mesh does not strip weight maps or anything - baking to external does not, so I've been using that method)...

I guess I am a little confused why there are 2 methods to do the same thing and when to use which...?

Texture baking tool is essentially outdated and inconvenient due to lack of the visual feedback. Merge with NM etc does exactly same but better. After all dont forget to delete initial object from the paint room. If you made unsuccessful baking pass, delete newely merged mesh using objects palette and try again.

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Texture baking tool is essentially outdated and inconvenient due to lack of the visual feedback. Merge with NM etc does exactly same but better. After all dont forget to delete initial object from the paint room. If you made unsuccessful baking pass, delete newely merged mesh using objects palette and try again.

Thank you for your response, but can you clarify the steps to do it with Merge with NMap?

Assume I have a high res model with many paint layers & UVs, I also have a low res LWO model to be the target to bake to. So, I should

1) Import high res model as per pixel into Paint room

2) Import low poly model as Retopo mesh into Retopo Room

3) Merge with NMap in Retopo room

4) Export Model or does Merge with Nmap save out like the Texture Baking Tool..

Is this correct?

Sorry for the questions, but I haven't done it this way before and I'm not sure how it works. And should I take it from your response that I should stop using the Texture baking tool and do it this way instead?

thanks!

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Thank you for your response, but can you clarify the steps to do it with Merge with NMap?

Assume I have a high res model with many paint layers & UVs, I also have a low res LWO model to be the target to bake to. So, I should

1) Import high res model as per pixel into Paint room

2) Import low poly model as Retopo mesh into Retopo Room

3) Merge with NMap in Retopo room

4) Export Model or does Merge with Nmap save out like the Texture Baking Tool..

Is this correct?

Sorry for the questions, but I haven't done it this way before and I'm not sure how it works. And should I take it from your response that I should stop using the Texture baking tool and do it this way instead?

thanks!

Yes. In (4) delete ref object using objects palette and export using File->Export or Textures->Export

And I updated document

http://www.3d-coat.com/files/Happy_baking_guide.pdf

There are a lot of tips at the end (I will add more probably)

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You need to pin it somewhere, and add it to official documentation at some point (after spell checking though ^^) because this will definitely help most people to grasp the basic principle of texture baking (and the countless thread on the internet on this particular subject shows how much people need explanations).

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thanks Andrew!

One more thing Andrew,

the fixes you made to loading LW 11.x objects with textures doesn't seem to load normal maps (set up as nodes in the LWO) - specs and color seem to load as does color, Also I'm not sure bump maps seem to load either.

And is it possible to load the textures into separate layers on load instead of collapsing them into Layer 1 as it seems to do now?

thanks!!

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You need to pin it somewhere, and add it to official documentation at some point (after spell checking though ^^) because this will definitely help most people to grasp the basic principle of texture backing (and the countless thread on the internet on this particular subject shows how much people need explanations).

I will definitely include it in documentation and in program itself (in baking dialog due to importance of topic). After spellcheck :)

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