A big help on this guys. I'm still a little ways from having a healthy version of Softimage up and running again. I'm looking foward to trying out your suggestions.
Irie Adam On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 8:41 PM, Eric Cosky <[email protected]> wrote: > Being primarily a Softimage user when it comes to 3D tools (I also use > 3dcoat, fwiw), I don’t know what I’m missing with respect to “proper cage > functionality” so if you don’t mind explaining that a bit further I’d > appreciate it. Ultimapper always seemed to work for my simple & limited > tests for baking maps within Softimage, but maybe there is a better way? Or > maybe there are bugs with it I haven’t noticed yet? **** > > ** ** > > Just curious, thanks.**** > > ** ** > > -Eric Cosky**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > *From:* [email protected] [mailto: > [email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Williams, Wayne > *Sent:* Wednesday, December 12, 2012 5:24 AM > *To:* [email protected] > *Subject:* RE: Normal Maps in Softimage**** > > ** ** > > Because Softimage doesn’t have proper cage functionality most folks I know > that still use Soft have ditched baking normals with it. Xnormal (freeware) > is pretty much the quasi-standard app for baking these days. 8 bit maps are > fairly standard in my travels. **** > > ** ** > > If you are trying to get more “bump” to your normal you can duplicate the > map in photoshop, double click it to bring up the layer dialog and set to > overlay and uncheck the blue channel. Merge those together and you have a > “stronger” map. Another thing to note is depending on what you will be > viewing in you may need to invert the green channel of the normal map, else > the normals will look flipped weird. **** > > ** ** > > Also, if you are going to be viewing this in a game engine as the final > result, it is typically standard workflow to check your normals there, > because in the end, it doesn’t really matter what they look like in > Soft/Maya/Max. **** > > ** ** > > -wayne**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > *From:* [email protected] [ > mailto:[email protected]<[email protected]>] > *On Behalf Of *Adam Sale > *Sent:* Wednesday, December 12, 2012 2:15 AM > *To:* [email protected] > *Subject:* Normal Maps in Softimage**** > > ** ** > > So, My Softimage decided to play hardball with me and stopped working > earlier this evening. **** > > ** ** > > What I had wanted to test out tonight were Normal Maps in Softimage. I > don't do a whole lot of texturing , and have known the normal map to be a > little strange in my past dealings with it. **** > > ** ** > > One of my students is having an issue generating normal maps out of mudbox > and getting them to work in Softimage. **** > > ** ** > > Is anyone having success with this, or do you generally import high res > meshes into soft and use Ultimapper to create the maps.**** > > ** ** > > When creating maps, is it best to create 16 bit or float maps/ Do they > always give superior results to 8 bit? **** > > ** ** > > My main issue with the normal maps out of Mudbox, is that they don't look > like the correct scale or relief of the normals mesh in midbox, or even > when I apply the normals to a similar mesh in Maya, and the fact the normal > map 3 node doesnt allow us to scale normals is a bit perplexing.**** > > ** ** > > The workaround with mixing the normal map with a mix 2 color node set to > mix with RGB at .5 and B at 1 doesn't quite cut it.. **** > > ** ** > > Is there a good working solution that I am simply missing? **** > > ** ** > > A better normalMap node perhaps? **** > > ** ** > > Irie..**** > > Adam**** > > ** ** > > ** ** >
