Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Mapping Tutorials

Mapping in Modo

1.       First, load in both your high and low poly and make sure they are in the same scene. (If you are coming from some other program, then the will make new scenes for each new object you open up.) Make sure to also name your meshes before making any moves so that you can tell them apart.



2.       With your low poly selected press the “m” key and you will see the following window. Name this material whatever you like and hit ok.



3.       Once that is done hit the “shading” tab next to “item lists” and select the new material you just made.(below) click the “add layer” option and follow this route “Image Map > (new image)”.



4.       Under the effects section of the new image right click and follow route “Surface Shading > Normal”



5.       After that is done right click on it and find and option “Bake from Object to Texture” and click it. It will ask you to provide a distance, just use a slightly smaller distance than the information provided below. Once that is done it will start generating your normal map. Exit the render screen when it’s done.



6.       Now while still in the shading tab with your material selected click “add layer” again. Follow path “Render Outputs > Lighting > Ambient Occlusion”.

7.       A new “Ambient Occlusion Output” will be created.



8.       Select it and click on the render button on your taskbar. Find an option “Bake from Object to Render Outputs”. Once again it will ask for a distance, just follow the previous steps for this. click ok and it will start generating your ambient occlusion map. (Important Note: if you hit ok and it gives you the error message saying that no UVs are selected. Just click on the normal map selection that we made earlier and click back on the ambient occlusion output. This should fix the issue and allow it to work.)

9.       When the render window pops up change the output at the top to “Ambient Occlusion Output” as shown below.


10.   Finally in the render window you can save the maps you just created using the scrolling selection at the bottom till you find the map you want and hitting “save image”.

 
 
 
 

Mapping in xNormal
 
 
1.       If coming from a different program use the max icon at the top left of the screen. To “import” your files into the same scene.
2.       Have your low poly and high poly models sitting in the same spot. Stacking them on top of each other as close as possible. Otherwise this will cause errors down the road.
3.       Add a “Projection” modifier under the modifier list (below) to your low poly model. After doing so you should see a blue cage around your model as seen below
       
 

 
4.       Using the push modifiers (above) for the amount and percent move the cage to fit the distance around the high poly model. Get as close as you can while still covering the whole of the high poly model.
5.       Once you are satisfied with the cage, export your high and low poly models [PNC1] out as “.obj” files separately. (easy way is to select your object and export selected.)

6.       Once this is done open up “xNormal” and you should see the following.

7.       Using the icons on the right side for high and low definition meshes, place your corresponding meshes into the locations by dragging and dropping or by right clicking and hitting add mesh.
8.       Once that is done click on baking options.

9.       Red area is your file name and location as well as the size of the file you want to produce. Green is the padding you want to keep this at a low number if it is not already so that the maps don’t have overlapping areas. Blue is where you have the choice of what type of map to render (I suggest doing one map at a time in case of complications.)
10.   Finally click “generate maps” and a window will pop up with your map as its being generated. You can change the type of map in the blue area from the previous step.
 

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