Baking Normals?

[Roninfang]

My first time trying to texture/paint the folds in and such without the use of Zbrush

need help/critique...anyways have no problem with the modeling part now, diffuse and specular getting the hang of it...but baking the normal maps seems to be always the killer for me

http://roninfang.deviantart.com/#/d4yi99p
this is with the diffuse, normal (the one i used to the test render i had to clean up i always have a hard time baking clean normal maps) and specular map

hmm a little help in baking normal maps

used xnormal for this 3d model

wanted to teach myself a bit first absolutely no zbrush since most of the game
studios here in the philippines dont use Zbrush or have zbrush as a part of the 3d job exam

everytime i bake a normal map in xnormal
it keeps coming out with some sort for distortation or something not sure if the settings
and such

which i end up always cleaning up the normal maps

anyways for my next 3d practice going to 3d one of my female OC's just noticed now i never done any
female characters in 3d which is something more complex than this Victor model...hmm that should
be good practice

[Roninfang]

Heres the base i used for xnormals



and heres how it turned out

[Roninfang]

as you can see the normal map didnt come out clean...hmmm

any suggestions?

[talonhawk]

one of your channels is inverted it seems

plus why you using the spec as a base for xnormal? You should load in the his res obj and the low res and adjust the swizzle coordinates if need be and bake

[Mogo]

These normal mapping tutorials should save you a lot of trouble:

http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/...61/normal-maps
http://poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow.htm

[talonhawk]

thanks for the evermotion link never seen this one yet

[Roninfang]

@talon hawk

hmm that isnt the Spec map

thats the diffuse map just turned of some of the layers because i felt like it might mess up the
normals when i bake it with Xnormal

@Mogo

ic will check out the links

[MRico]

Hmmm, so you don't have an actual high poly? Well...this might be tedious.

What you need to do is on that grey texture paint over it. Remember that everything white will pop out and everything black will sink in.

So for example, the pockets, and suspenders, you should go over it and paint them white. You basically want to make a height map to then make a normal map from.

For stuff made out of photoshop I use Njob http://charles.hollemeersch.net/njob

Just make that height map take into Njob and play around with it and you should get something better...although, nothing will give you a better more accurate normal map than actually baking from a high poly.

Also smooth out your transitions more you're getting a real "crispy" look to your normal map. Also, are you sure you require a normal map? If you push your highlights and shadows more you would be able to fake those folds on the clothing better. Because right now your clothes look really dark. Hard to tell what's going on.

[Roninfang]

"Hmmm, so you don't have an actual high poly"

yup didnt make a high poly for this

wanted to give it try

no high poly, no zbrush

since most job test i noticed here in the philippines your not allowed to use a high poly and no zbrush

"What you need to do is on that grey texture paint over it. " hmmm the Diffuse/color map?

i am trying out the workflow that the spec and normal/bump will be more less based on the diffuse/color map hmmm

"If you push your highlights and shadows more you would be able to fake those folds on the clothing better." ic ill give it a shot

[Mogo]

yup didnt make a high poly for this

xNormal requires you to have a high poly mesh if you're going to bake in any details. Kinda defeats the purpose of baking a normal map if you don't actually have high poly detail to bake in.

[Roninfang]

ic, maybe that's what i was doing wrong :facepalm:

was using option in Xnormal forgot where in the menu
but from the Height Map thing it converts it to a Normal Map

hmmm but if thats the case how do i got about a job test (ran into 2 job test so far that asked for a normal map as well but wasnt allowed to have a high res model and no zbrush) that will require a normal map for the 3d model without using a high poly and/or zbrush

hmmm

in anycase thanks so far all the advice/critiqued

it really helped ^_^

[talonhawk]

I always make hi poly model first then your free to do whatever then retopo it uv it and bake your normals. Remember you only need to uv the low poly

[Roninfang]

@talon
maybe for personal artworks, ill do that workflow

though for job tests
usually just given a sketch of something

then model it (low poly as much as possible) and unwrap

in some studio though job test also includes texturing as well

[Roninfang]

also forgot to add...would it alright if any one here that can rig and animate a bit
rig and animate the Vasko mesh? ill send the file as a Obj

just wanted to see if this thing animation friendly

and i am not very good at rigging and character animation

[Shadownami92]

There is always the idea of learning to rig and animate on your own. Knowing the basics of those skillsets is very helpful to know.

Blender and 3DS Max have simple rigging solutions so overall those wouldn't be a problem if you use one of them.

Maya had quick rigging solution plugins on sites like Creative Crash I believe.

For 3DS Max you can look up a CAT rigging tutorial, your mesh is simple enough to get that working fast. And CAT has an auto walk cycle feature you could experiment with.

If you use Blender 2.5 or higher you can check out rigify for rigging.

But seriously, I think if you try out rigging it should help your skill set a lot. And it's nice so you can pose your models for presentations and not have to rely on others to do so.

[Roninfang]

i do know how to rig and animate but its not my strong skill

"autowalk" function in CAT hmmm

[waterbear1224]

(Since you can't make a hi poly model...)

You can always paint the wrinkles and details into the diffuse and then use the photoshop filters that xnormal automatically gives you. They have height to normal and a few others.

You might need to make a few normal maps (by turning off/on certain layers), and then overlay those normal maps together into one file.

It also might help if you made a few brushes with layer styles to help imitate height in your wrinkles.

[Roninfang]

ic

hmmm

just that i noticed all of the 3d job test ive been through here in the philippines

your not allowed to make a high poly and use zbrush
but in the portforlio they having maybe 1 or 2 3d model with zbrush used is a plus but not a requirement

usually goes like this
they give you a 2d artwork of something

either they ask you
to just model and unwrap it

or

model, unwrap it and texture it


a lot of the game studios here usually work on mobile games, iphone, ipads

there a few game studios here that outsource for the ones that make on the major consoles
like ps3, pc etc but not that many