The random model thread!

[Steppenwolf]

You know how often you get ugly artifacts from the bake picking up wrong stuff in tight places especially when you bake meshes that are not exploded? Blockers are simple planes that you put inbetween these tight spaces of your model then export as separate mesh. In xnormal right click on your low poly and load the blocker file. It's one way to get cleaner bakes, avoiding stuff that needs to be cleaned up in photoshop otherwise and saves time because you can get away with without having to explode a mesh where this method works just fine.

[PogoP]

Oh that sounds really cool. Do you have any example images? I'm interested in looking into this!

[Dejavo]

I too suffer from gradient normal bake-syndrome. I learned that the low poly should be fully smoothed and you're good. And I've just kinda fixed my bakes in photoshop since. So you guys are saying that hard edges should be uv splits to avoid them?

Edited December 17, 2013 by Dejavo

[Steppenwolf]

Oh that sounds really cool. Do you have any example images? I'm interested in looking into this!

 

Quixel has a ndo2/ddo tutorial on their youtube channel where i learned about this trick. I don't get that i never heard of this before on polycount or whereever because it's an official option inside xnormal. Maybe i just read the wrong threads or didn't pay attention because there was no visual explanation.

 

 

edit:

 

on another note. this is an example that i grabbed from fuzyheads bake. See how the normal warps on the left side? This is a case for which i would usualy combine the two different bakes in PS to fix it. From my understanding a better cage could avoid this but it's just something that i struggle with in some ocassions. Like sometimes i can't have the cage tighter because of some other details in the hipoly or whatever :/

 

Edited December 17, 2013 by Steppenwolf

[PogoP]

Oh wow that's pretty sweet. Never thought to try that before!

 

I tend to do most of my baking in 3ds max recently though, I did it on all my NS2 assets. I just think not having to export to another program (Xnormal) and doing it all in 3ds max was quicker.

[Steppenwolf]

For me xnormal is way quicker. Even huge maps only take a couple seconds while in max it can take forever. But might just be my hardware or my settings.

[knj]

that blocker info is a killer, i've never heared about it either

[PogoP]

For me xnormal is way quicker. Even huge maps only take a couple seconds while in max it can take forever. But might just be my hardware or my settings.

 

I just don't like the Xnormal Cage tool. Seems really intuitive, in comparison to Max anyway.

[KoKo5oVaR]

Mind blown, thanks step

[penE]

Neat little trick .

 

I'm working on a soviet KM-1 ejection seat. It will be part of a small scene to be rendered in cry engine, once their pbr update is out. Scene will be a cockpit of a jet with crazy little details everywhere .
Thats the current state of the high poly for the seat (in Marmoset Toolbag 2):

 

 

edit: hipster instragram version lol:

 

Edited December 17, 2013 by penE

[kikette]

Just awesome *_* Very credible !

[Minos]

Nice modelling and great presentation penE, A+

[penE]

Thanks guys

[knj]

this is just HP with base polygon color's ? modeling vise it's great, but Marmo 2 makes great renders

[penE]

Yeah, also applied a spec and a gloss map from the maps that come with the toolbag, but since the model isn't unwrapped properly it's only noticable in some very few areas.