334 réponses à ce sujet

[Eguintir Eligard]

It's not a symmetrical texture at this stage. The high detail model is purposely different (crease/folds are different on each side, shoe laces as well).

 

The base model (as we now know it) is symetrical yes.

 

So what can I do with the projection cage? It seems all I can do is make it bigger or smaller. Is that what I do?

 

Thanks!

 

Figured it out... had to pull pixels out of his butt crack. I guess stuff can get lost in there.

 

So here is a normal mapped low poly (4k) guy on the right, standing next to the high poly (111k polygon) mesh on the left.

 

You can see some normal mapping taking place, particularly the shoe laces seem fine.

 

But a lot of it is lost... there seems to be no shirt ripples at all and there are huge gouges in the texture on the right shoulder, right ankle,

and all over the neck top and the hands. You can't see some of that in the picture, but you can definitely see the two rings around the high ankles on the boots. It's like its misaligned or broken but only in certain spots... Anyone have any ideas at all on this? Are my colours even inverted properly for the red?

 

I re-committed the smoothing groups once the UVW pelt was already done, sine some were not assigned, just in case that is a factor or could be... other than that I followed by the book processes.

[Eguintir Eligard]

I wonder if this IS due to the reversed red channel... and if it would only look proper in game. The tutorial seemed to allude to this will have to look at this again another day

[IAmDeathComeForThee]

You can just reverse your channels on the map in the gimp normal map plugin.  Works like a charm.  Do it the way you were doing it without worrying about the red channel, and flip it if it needs flipping via the gimp plugin if it looks "inside out" IG.

 

You can also increase the intensity/depth of your normal with that plugin, if you are having weak results to better show the details.

[-Semper-]

btw the background of a normal map texture is always neutral - 128/128/255 (RGB).

[Eguintir Eligard]

Hey guys thanks for the response. I have the Normalmap plugin (tool) of gimp open.

 

I see OPTIONS:

Wrap

Invert X

Invert Y

Swap RGB

 

I assume we need to invert the x or the y for NWN2, and one of them is represented by the red channel some how? Which one do I do?

 

Looks like height is determined by scale.

 

 

But correct me if I am wrong but wasn't this setup to make a normal map out of a regular map? Isn't it going to screw up my normal map if I do stuff to it and save it?

[-Semper-]

why don't you just bake a simple bevel as a normal map, wrap it on one of nwn2's flat planes for testing purposes and look within the editor with a moving light how it looks? if it appears to be correct then you just can bake in max without any changes. else you can experiment with flipping channels.

 

a texture like this shows errors in an instant. use a gray  midtone as the diffuse color.

 

[Eguintir Eligard]

Since I'll be away a bit I'll ask my other question in here. I definitely need to understand why we invert the red channel (so I know what it does) still though.

 

 

I don't know how to tell if it's right in game because I don't know what I am looking for. What does the red do??

 

And I was able to get my model in game, you can't see it but it's a single bone skeleton and the headless fat guy bounces up and down while idling.

 

 

This is the updated normal map that I edited with gimp to deepen slightly and I think I inverted the red properly. So it works in game but it has brought with it new positives and new adjustments and questions.

 

I can see now that the shirt sides definitely show up good now, with the creases and swirls very evident. I have noticed the shoelaces are a little weak.

 

A) What I also see is that the seams are very grainy. Two thoughts occur to me here. It must be the detail on the high poly model initially, and then how much of that is translated is based on the resolution size of my normal map, is it not? could I smooth those creases out to be more like the high poly version with a larger texture map?

 

B ) I notice a lot of little rough spots. The hands look over imposed by some bumpy geometry and you can see little rough edges poking out the middle of the shirt. 
Is that just something that comes out of my high poly model being inconsistent? 

 

Thanks!

[-Semper-]

do as i said with the simple normal map to check for errors.

if you open the baked normal map with gimp and look at the seperated channels you should see what they'll do (look at the shading). the red channel points the normals left or right, the green channel points them up and down, and the blue one is basically a hightmap pointing the normals in- and outwards.

 

a)without a big picture of your high poly model it's hard to say what's causing this. anyway i doubt that the resolution of the normal map has any part in it. 512x512 or 1024x1024 ain't that low to begin with. it looks like issues with your nurms, either because of a too low iteration or bad underlying geometry. a higher resolved normal map won't really help. nonetheless it's always a good practice to render the final outputs at a higher resolution and downsize them later. this way details will be more crisp.

b)we need close ups of your high poly model. else everything is just guesswork.

[Eguintir Eligard]

Alright thanks again for the theory. Now that I have crossed off a few questions I think  I can get a good experimental work flow going to handle B.

 

I think a relax modifier here and there will flatten that out.

 

The high res man does have hints of "pixelating" on the edges, but nothing too serious. I think the shading contributes to that whole mess.

None the less I will bump his res one more time.  I'll get a good 3ds projection --> Gimp normal map adjustment --> toolset view cycle going and try

and tackle it all out.

 

Going to work now will look at this later. I do have the lingering question though, is using gimp normal map plugin on an already normal map correct usage? It explicitly states its used to make a normal map from a regular texture, so I was just wondering if normal on normal causes degradation?

[-Semper-]

NEVER EVER use a normal map plugin on a normal map. those plugins calculate the normals only from the dark/bright pixels from the picture - and normally do a more or less great job on that, but this will never come close to the baked normal map you created with max. this map is based on the actual geometry of your model and you will destroy this information through the plugin.

 

i guess you're using gimp to flip the red channel. all you have to do is to select the appropriate channel, press ctrl+i (if that's the hotkey for inverting in gimp), and save the texture as a dds file. btw you can flip the channels in max too.

 

 

in the window on the right in the lower part there're the "normal map space options". there's the red and green channel and the directional influence on the normals listed (from which side the light shines). you can simply redirect red to left to flip the channel. to be honest, i don't really know if nwn2 uses a flipped red channel*. the majority of games use x+ y- z+, and after looking at nwn2's vanilla normal maps it seems to be the case here too. without testing all i do is guesswork at this time

 

*) i took that picture from same tutorial you used. and that's also the only time the red channel is mentioned. i can't find an official word on that.

[Eguintir Eligard]

Hmm... Then I now have no idea how to deepen my normal map..

[-Semper-]

below the "normal space options" there's height map slider. this should work to deepen the indents. in gimp you could also dublicate the layer of your texture and play around with overlay blending. while this also changes the stored information it ain't that bad like a plugin.

[Eguintir Eligard]

I see. And I see height map min and Max in that pic you showed. This should be sufficient. I feel like we're getting this step almost wrapped up. It's good because I gave up twice due to a lack of guidance on mapping in the past few years.

[Eguintir Eligard]

Through trial and error, I have figured out why the normal maps are so abrasive and rough and ugly.

 

It appears there may be too much detail in the base model, and the normal map projection is basically baking detail onto detail.

 

Here's how I figured it out.

 

I'm looking at his sleeves in game (the raised rings representing the rolled up sleeve) and I notice in game and in normal map, it looks all rough and jagged. The high poly model looks very smooth as does the base model.

 

So here is what I did... I flattened out the rolled sleeve so that it was just a smooth and continous arm, on the high poly mesh (yes that's right, I "un-detailed" the high poly version in that spot). Sure enough my normal map comes out nice and clean and smooth on his sleeve.

 

I did the same on the other sleeve and got the same result. I looked at how ugly the hands were, even though I did not touch them (didn't increase polys in that region either), even projecting equal detail onto equal detail makes a rough and ugly hand in the end.

 

So at this point I guess Nurms did come back to haunt me.

 

But I am wondering what I can still salvage this with.

 

2 thoughts occur:

 

1) I could simply paint textures onto it as my base model seems to have enough geometry at least for my needs, not to need a full on UV Map (could leave it all default light blue).

 

2) This thought seems better... I could just paint it default blue (the one you told me about that represents flat/default ) where there is harsh details showing up. Basically I would use a lot of this on the UVW map, but still keep it for the things it does do such as the shoe laces where I would not paint over. Also some of the creases look ok and I would paint over the chippy ones.

 

Idea 2 sounds best. Is it sound logically to do that or is there some pitfall I am not seeing?

[Eguintir Eligard]

Here's a comparable of the in game bump map now that I've cleaned it up manually a bit:

 

OLD

 

https://lh3.googleus...set_normal1.jpg

 

NEW

 

https://lh5.googleus...set_normal2.jpg

[Eguintir Eligard]

Ok now I am not so sure I did the wrong thing with my low poly model.

This video looks very similar to my models... close in basic detail between the two heads (about 1 minute in)



So my theory generated results, but I don't see why my attempt looked so bad then, if this is how close the models are in quality in other high to low projection tutorials...

A third option I have concocted: I have been smart enough to save many stages of my modelling. I still have the old lego model. I could go back to this.

I guess I am missing a bit of theory on this part.

Given this picture (my "Lego" 1.5k poly vs a level 1 nurms 7k poly):



Is that too low poly or low quality to work on? If so, I don't know what to do about it, it's already 1.5k polies although I do have an idea.
I could use the nurms version as a "silhouette" to move the pieces around on the low poly to get it more rounded looking. But it looks as high a detail
as some of the low poly tutorials I've seen already.

If it is good enough to project onto, can it really look like the image on the right with 7k nurms just with a UVW map? Because they are very different looking right now I just don't see how it's possible. But am I wrong?

[-Semper-]

It appears there may be too much detail in the base model, and the normal map projection is basically baking detail onto detail.

there's nothing like too much detail. well, technically there is but then your normal map is of a too low resolution to store micro-detail. and trust me, there's no such level of detail in your high poly model.

 

If it is good enough to project onto, can it really look like the image on the right with 7k nurms just with a UVW map?

it is good enough to project detail - the question is, what detail should be baked? the mesh on the right looks like a smoothed version of the left model, and there's nothing to project. a normal map can't change the outline of a model, therefore your low poly model will always look "blocky" if looked at closer. the job of a normal map is to create the illusion of _fine_ detail.

 

to help you we are in need of screens (or better the .max file) of your low and high poly model, at best with and without wireframe. also a screen of your uv map is needed. you should also do your homework and read everything you can about normal maps and baking projctions. especially about uv maps, tangent calculation and how smoothing groups play into all of this.

 

btw did you collapse the stack, created smoothing groups and uv'ed afterwards? we can't help you if there's so little knowledge of your exact working process.

[rjshae]

Given this picture (my "Lego" 1.5k poly vs a level 1 nurms 7k poly):


Is that too low poly or low quality to work on? If so, I don't know what to do about it, it's already 1.5k polies although I do have an idea.

 

On models like that, the parts that stick out for me are the curved edges--the bottom of the pants and shoes, for example. I sometimes double the vertices along the curved border edges to smooth them out.

 

The lumpy belly just looks normal for a chunky person.

[Eguintir Eligard]

So I need to manually cut more loops if I want a little rounder look in some areas. I swear The nwn 2 models look much smoother in game.

Yes that is only a smoothed version of the Lego guy. I'd like to make him look smoother with the normal map. If I can't I guess a tad more geometry must be added. I've done all the smooth groups immediately this time. This is why I had a base model with nurms 1 on because I wanted his basic geometry to smooth out. I've been watching projection videos. I get that it's only for fine detail I just think the nwn 2 models look too good to be just simple man made edge loops but I could be wrong.

So the correct way to raise his base detail is with big manually added loops and keep everything in quads? And if I add detail in a loop it will have to loop the entire length or width of the body to be correct right?

[-Semper-]

I've done all the smooth groups immediately this time. This is why I had a base model with nurms 1 on because I wanted his basic geometry to smooth out. I've been watching projection videos. I get that it's only for fine detail I just think the nwn 2 models look too good to be just simple man made edge loops but I could be wrong.

 

just to be clear, when talking about smoothing groups i don't mean to add actual geometry. i don't have max at hand right now but it should be somewhere to find in the editable poly modifier. with its help you can group polys so that they appear as a smooth surface.

the high poly models of nwn2 are made in zbrush. since years nobody models such detail by hand. it's all 3d scultping or the conversion of textures into normal maps.

 

the correct and moste efficient pipeline would be as this:

•  create a base mesh in your favorite modeling or sculpting app
•  sculpt and refine the base mesh and go crazy with details
•  paint or stamp the textures on the surface of the high poly mesh (either vertex painting or ptex; it's also possible to paint directly in uv if your base mesh was unwrapped and the uv sets were subdivided with the model); it's also possible to only diffuse paint the low poly model later in the process
•  retopologize the high poly model either in your scuplting app or export a not so high detailed model (only the general form is needed for retopology) to your favorite modeling app and retopologize there; retopologizing means creating the low poly version of the model
•  create smoothing groups and unwrap the low poly model
•  bake the painted texture (diffuse map) and details (normal map) to the low poly model
•  create lod models and rig everything

[Eguintir Eligard]

I did actual smoothing groups.

See what you are saying is kind of what I did. I chiseled a body. Then I nurm smoothed it but only once to give it a nicer shape. Then I can reduce the rings manually. And that would be a higher quality low poly base. What do you think of that approach?

Only reason that didn't pan out is the high poly model was making messy UVW maps, all grainy and rough o n edges. Not related you think?

[-Semper-]

Then I nurm smoothed it but only once to give it a nicer shape. Then I can reduce the rings manually. And that would be a higher quality low poly base.
Only reason that didn't pan out is the high poly model was making messy UVW maps, all grainy and rough o n edges. Not related you think?

 

if anything i would not nurm modify a low poly mesh to get geometry, but create the additional edges manually. personally i would simply retopogize the high poly model to create the low poly model. for old engines like nwn2 the in-game low poly model is a totally different model than the high poly's base mesh.

 

when you're talking about the high poly model you mean the high poly model for detail creation, and not the higher poly version of your lego mesh, right? if so then why do you need uvs for the high poly model?

[Eguintir Eligard]

My previous attempt was a low poly made by manual box model and then a nurm x 1.

My high poly was the low poly, subdivided twice and then I added the ripples, and shoe laces etc.

They simply don't map on each other... It looked horrid as you saw in the pics comparing. Nothing in google mentioned why, but like I said when I dumbed down the grainy areas and reduced detail, the normal map that resulted got a lot cleaner.

Surely someone knows why.

[Eguintir Eligard]

What do you think of this comment I found on a tutorial for making better normal maps?

 

Only One Smoothing Group, No Hard Edges
Up until now, smoothing groups (or hard edges) have been a good way to accentuate features of a low poly model and make the details more clear and readable. It used to be important to use smoothing groups carefully to create a good model. Throw all of that out the window. Smoothing groups are an enemy to normal maps. Your low poly model should have one smoothing group (no hard edges). Here's why:

 

 

http://www.benclowar...al_maps10.shtml

[Eguintir Eligard]

Is there any reason why, if I am sure and finished with my base mesh, that i can't start the animation stage and skeletons while I wait for a result of this normal maps error? I don't see one, other than it's kind of out of the order of things. Please comment if you think I shouldn't for some reason.