How to make good NORMAL maps in 3dsmax??

[gigamaxjur]

hello guys, i have a question:How to make good NORMAL maps in 3dsmax??
I know what are normal maps, i know how to make them, but i dont have much experience with it!
When i make normal maps with zbrush 3.1 they look ok,i mean they are good!
But when i try to make them in 3dmax i noticed if i try to render normal maps for larger and detailed models, normal map looks like shit!
But if i break that model into smaller parts and render them individually, and then bring renders together in photoshop, the results are good, thou it still seems zbrush makes better normal maps than 3dmax, or maybe i just dont get it! So i am asking u guys, am i on the right track? or is there an easyer way to make normal maps in 3dmax? i USE "RENDER TO TEXTURE" and "projection" , mental ray!?? tnx !

[mr_ace]

everyone has their preference, i prefer max for mine. i think it gives good normal results and u can bake AO also. it's always good to seperate ur model to bake maps if it's very complicated or high poly. if i'm doing a character, i'll seperate the head etc and bake them seperately.

as for the process, ben mathis has a good guide at poopinmymouth.com, but the basics are ensure low and high poly are lined up, only the low poly needs UVs, open render to texture, pick high poly, pick maps, pick map size, fix cage (or turn the cage off in the options) then bake

in fact, i just realised theres another guide by marcus dublin at the top of the WIPs page called marcus game art workshop or something, which takes u through normal and AO, and cage setup and stuff

[gigamaxjur]

hey tnx man, it seems im on the right track, i think i understand it all now ! Check our team website www.unrealphd.com (we are a new team, page is WIP)!
btw : Yesterday i tried "xnormal" application and it gives same result as 3dmax , but it seems much faster, and can take a lot more polys for highres mesh!
I like it!

[Neox]

can you show us what your problems are? i mean in images... i've rendered 30mio tris inside max into normalmaps, so no Problems on my side

[mr_ace]

neox, i'd love to hear how you do that. i can't get more than 5million into max without it crashing

[Neox]

well it's very simple

the max renderer can handle that with ease, the viewport doesn't like the heavy amount of polygons and also the old exporter (max2008 and before) didn't like high polycounts, if you havge max 2008 and before grab the Guruware ex/importer plugin (thats integrated in max2009)

So if you have the importer working all you need to do is keep the viewport from showing the polygons (turn of statistics too ), for this just right click the viewport label and set it to other > boundingbox if you have that every object will be shown as boxes, this way you can import almost any mesh 8well as long as you have enough ram).
If you have it in max just set the objects properties to boundingbox, you can then put the viewport back to normal. For the cage setup just import a lower level of you mesh with level 2 or 3 depending on the polycount, i never import more then 200k tris, but most times i don't need so many, as i only need the volumes not the details.

[gigamaxjur]

tnx for info neox! Here is my latest normal map, i rendered 5 pieces separetly and then joined them in photoshop! Im noob to normalmaps,i tested this in unreal editor and i still have a fealing this could be better!This model has about 400polys, and that texture is just a test one!

[Marcus Dublin]

Judging by the images it looks like you're baking out the normal maps with multiple smoothing groups applied to your low poly target mesh. Always remember when baking normal maps in max that you have to apply one smoothing group or else you'll receive some of the funky errors that I'm seeing.

Not only that but the low poly mesh should only contain one smoothing group per element. For some reason it looks like the mesh with the diffuse map applied has multiple smoothing groups on the same element. I can tell from the facets occurring on the 90-degree faces you have shown.

If you want you can check out my tutorial: http://www.marcusdublin.com/ParagalisTutorialPage5.html I go over the normal map process in 3ds max and highlight a few things to look out for. Feel free to download the file as well for the final results.

[Aftermath]

^^^^ Listen to the man

[gigamaxjur]

hey tnx guys u are all great! Here i applyed smooth modifier and set smoothing groups for all parts to 1 and this normal map looks much better now! Marcus your tutorial is awesome, I read about this smoothing groups in other tuts too, but i didnt pay atention! However when i tested in unreal looks a lot the same as yesterday,i guess i have to make a good texture now, and should look OK! TNX again to all, this seems like a great community!

[ilegacy]

This one smoothing group thingie works fine for organic surfaces but i saw problems in our gameengine: if you have a cube with one smoothing group, you get this light gradients on it sides. To avoid that, you can just delete all smoothing groups but then you will get problems on the uv seems. But if you break these, you will get it fine.

Hm...i think you cylinders looks weird...look at the upper left corner in your normal map: every side of your cylinder seems to be one single smoothing group...

Here is an picture for better explanation. Sorry that i have no example for the bad gradient thingy, i don't have the game engine on this pc. I hope you will see what i mean...

[Rasmus Holmgren]

It is by no means true that everything "in Max" should be one smoothing group... Of course it is always desirable to have as few splits in a mesh as possible, and especially for more organic surfaces fewer smoothing groups make perfect sense, but remember that even with a mesh of only one smoothing group but with multiple UV elements things are still broken up and treated as separate in a game engine. So for reasons of logic and clean results, I find that the following workflow works great for hard-surface things like your example:

1. Divide into smoothing groups roughly anywhere there's a 90 + degree angle.
2. Map your UVs to match the smoothing groups - one group, one UV element.
3. Before projecting for the bake, detach the mesh into separate mesh elements in accordance with the smoothing groups (and weld it back again after baking). This way the cage will behave across your separate elements.
4. Apply projection modifier, adjust and bake.

This way you SHOULD have one drawcall per UV group, and a clean, problem-free bake requiring minimal editing. That's how I roll!

[ilegacy]

Rasmus Holmgren
That's exactly my workflow

[gigamaxjur]

hiii hm, interesting,... well i did that render, the same as u say, only when i broke down(detached) into smaller parts, i rendered each one individually!
And i make 2 meshes : 1 for rendering maps , 2nd for exporting, it also helps couse on the mesh for rendering u can simply delete all duplicate parts that share same uv space!
Anyway i tried to render it 3 ways as ilegacy says : smoothed surface, hard surface stiched uvs ,and broken uvs!
I must agree that the normal map with smoothing groups causes some weird lighting on the bigger straight edges, some parts get too dark, and the chamfered edges seem to glow,lol, on the other hand , the small detail parts look a lot better with smoothing groups applyed, so i got best result if i use both methods!
About broken uvs method: im not sure if i understand that, couse i tried and my normal renders look very much the same as with stiched uvs, looks same in game engine too!
I did learn a lot with ur help guys, i now better understand how a model should be built to make the most out of normal map, that model i rendered there, is a bad example, too many straight edges, normals just love organic surfaces and ignore 90degrees angles!
So right now im learning to write HLSL shaders, i already made shader with normal map support, makes my work a lot easyer beeing able to preview my models with normal maps in 3dmax! I will post my final render when its finished, but i will need at least 1 week! That render piece up there is just a wall-part of the tileable tunnel piece i am making for our unreal map! tnx guys, cya!