Help with Texture Baking Normal maps

[popwfx]

Can anyone tell me what I might be doing wrong with texture baking where some normals would bake and others wouldn't? I'm getting a situation where the cloth texture on the shirt here doesn't seem to bake into the low poly model (yes these are high poly models imported into 3DC and not voxels from the sculpt room).

I was able to get the face to bake subtleties like beard growth and skin pores and hair normal maps and spec (and color of course) onto my low poly model - but for some reason the stitching on the shirt and the cloth fabric bumps in the source high poly normals don't end up getting baked to the low poly model. I thought it might be multiple layers conflicting so I tried the shirt by itself and I still have the problem. So since the face bakes normals ok I thought maybe I was doing something wrong. The high and low poly models are virtually in the same locations (I made the low poly in the retopo room off of the hi res version).

Does the scan values help with this? The defaults are in and out scans of 12 -- I've tried lower values like 6 and hight values like 18 and there is very little difference except the slight angle of the wrinkle on the chest. On the left in this image you see what the hi res shirt looks like in 3DC with its normal map of the shirt fabric (in its UV layout). While on the right there you see the baked output of the low poly model (which has a different UV layout). Can anyone suggest what might be going wrong here? thanks!

[digman]

In the texture baking tool did you point 3DCoat to the correct low polygon model with the uv map not to default temp file?

"Mesh to receive projected textures"

I do not think it is your scan settings as the mesh depth is not that great and the skin bumps were correctly baked on the face... Checking never hurts though.

You might be correctly doing this already but since there was no screen capture of your settings for the texture baking tool, I'm just taking a guess.

Catch me on Skype sometime if you do not find the solution...

[Zeddicus]

I encountered something very similar recently when trying to find a way to create displacement maps for a low poly retopo mesh which had more than one UV set. Both those and the normal maps would come out totally blurry. Unfortunately there are quite a few ways to accomplish tasks like these; some work, some don't. The only thing I can suggest is that if one method doesn't work, try another.

1) Retopo > Bake texture

2) Textures > Texture baking tool

3) Textures > Export > Normal Map

4) File > Export Model

The first one applies to an unmerged mesh in the retopo room and doesn't work properly with multiple UV sets, while the last three are all applicable to a mesh that has been merged to the paint room (to per-pixel with NM is what I usually use). Each one works slightly different than the others and the difference in output between them can be vast depending on the settings chosen.

Edit: It's also easy to forget to merge to pp/mv/ptex seeing as the 3b file is always loaded into the paint room first. I'm having trouble remembering, but this combined with method #2 might be how I got my blurry textures. I'll see if I can't reproduce it tonight (Another edit, nope that just makes blank maps lol).

Edit 3: Ok I managed to reproduce it. I merged my retopo mesh to the paint room using per-pixel with nm, then used method #2 above using the following settings:

[Carlosan]

erhh...

Layers

Color Blend

Normals

?

[popwfx]

We are talking about 2 different issues here it seems. Digman & I just found out there appears to be a baking bug. This also appears to be unrelated to the number of UV maps you have.

I don't use voxels much these days, mine is an imported hi-res model for per pixel painting and I tried to bake to an external low poly model. What the deal is, is that if you load a hi res model for per pixel painting and because it is LWO, it doesn't automatically load the textures (which may be another bug) - and so you have to manually load textures into the Layers so that you can have a hi-res model to do baking from... Well, if you load color diffuse maps into some layers and then load specs in to others, and load greyscale displacement maps into other layers, and load external normal maps as well, then everything seems to bake correctly, EXCEPT externally loaded normal maps which get loaded onto a layer called "NormalMap[ext]" despite actually seeming to work inside 3DCoat, don't bake out to the normals when baking using the Texture Baking Tool.

If you load a greyscale displacement map, that not only loks fine in 3DC as well, but it WILL bake correctly to normals using the Texture Baking Tool. It seems if you load an existing Normal map that doesn't get baked as part of the normals (despite being correctly additive inside 3DC).

I will attempt to make a sample object and report a Mantis on this and let Andrew know.

I'm not sure about the problem Zeddicus mentions, I think that is something else.

[popwfx]

Mantis bug report is here:

http://3d-coat.com/mantis/view.php?id=1020

[Carlosan]

The Layers0 is used with paint information

Layer0 must be empty

External Maps must be imported using

Layer > Import > Depth

Please will you try ?

-----------------------------------------------------------------

//OFF TOPIC

When import the model

http://phtn.me/3dcmantisbug1020

its loaded with 3 UVsets

ballBot

ballMid

ballTop

BUT

when switch to UVroom

only ONE UVset is showed

ballBot

and the 3 UVsets are listed in the Materials Window

ballBot

ballMid

ballTop

Please add +1 to this request. Support needed, ty

http://3d-coat.com/m...view.php?id=797

Materials and UV-Sets have the same meaning but you are using different words

[popwfx]

The Layers0 is used with paint information

Layer0 must be empty

External Maps must be imported using

Layer > Import > Depth

Please will you try ?

-----------------------------------------------------------------

//OFF TOPIC

When import the model

http://phtn.me/3dcmantisbug1020

its loaded with 3 UVsets

ballBot

ballMid

ballTop

BUT

when switch to UVroom

only ONE UVset is showed

ballBot

and the 3 UVsets are listed in the Materials Window

ballBot

ballMid

ballTop

Please add +1 to this request. Support needed, ty

http://3d-coat.com/m...view.php?id=797

Materials and UV-Sets have the same meaning but you are using different words

Carlosa, I'm not sure what you mean. External maps can be loaded by Textures > Import > Diffuse map / Specular map / Displacement map (for greyscales) / or Normal Map (for external normal map files).

What I am saying with this bug, is that all of this bakes in voiding hand painted depth EXCEPT for any depth imported with Textures > Import > Normal Map - this bug makes these depth additions not bake even though the look ok inside 3DCoat.

Also, the surfaces in the test object and the uv sets have nothing to do with this external imported normal map not baking. I'm not sure what you are saying about that...?

[popwfx]

The Layers0 is used with paint information

Layer0 must be empty

External Maps must be imported using

Layer > Import > Depth

Please will you try ?

-----------------------------------------------------------------

//OFF TOPIC

When import the model

http://phtn.me/3dcmantisbug1020

its loaded with 3 UVsets

ballBot

ballMid

ballTop

BUT

when switch to UVroom

only ONE UVset is showed

ballBot

and the 3 UVsets are listed in the Materials Window

ballBot

ballMid

ballTop

Please add +1 to this request. Support needed, ty

http://3d-coat.com/m...view.php?id=797

Materials and UV-Sets have the same meaning but you are using different words

.

Oh I think I understand some of your confusion.

There is one uv map inside this high res ball object. There are 3 surfaces (what 3DC calls materials). It just happens that the uv map gets named after the first surface name when the hi res ball was first imported into the Paint room. This is not a problem and is unrelated to this bug.

[Carlosan]

- Textures > Import > Normal Map (external NM done with another app) is not working

- Layer > Import > Depth (same external NM done with another app) is working

Will you check it please ?

ty

[Zeddicus]

carlosa: Textures > Import > Normal Map is working fine for me.

photonvfx: As for my example, I posted it because it matched your example perfectly. You can see what it's supposed to look like in that same image. I imported a high res mesh with no UV's from ZBrush, retopo'ed to low poly and UV'ed in 3D Coat, then merged to per-pixel with NM. Exporting through the textures menu gives a sharp map, while the texture bake tool gives a blurred map. Given the identical appearance of your normal map and mine (the ones in this thread, not the example on Mantis which looks very different) I'd guess the cause is the same, whatever that may be. Displacement maps come out completely blurred that way too.