It's hard to take that url seriously. I think next time you should run
it through a link shortner :)
On 13/12/2012 11:16 AM, Manny Papamanos wrote:
Here’s a good cage example.
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow_2.htm
Look at barrels at bottom.
Feature request was already logged and I updated it:
SOFT-5435 Ultimapper needs cage support to control ray length and direction
Manny Papamanos
Autodesk 3D Graphics Specialist
Softimage | MotionBuilder | Mudbox
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Szabolcs Matefy
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2012 3:03 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Normal Maps in Softimage
In SI using ultimapper you set an overall scan distance. In other solution
there is a cage (the clone of the original low res model) and you tweak this
cage to set the distance on a per vertex level. It’s almost critical in game
dev where you might need different distances on your model (armpit, behind ear
areas are good examples)
From:
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Eric Cosky
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2012 5:41 AM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: RE: Normal Maps in Softimage
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]>
[mailto:[email protected]]<mailto:[mailto:[email protected]]>
On Behalf Of Williams, Wayne
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 5:24 AM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[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]>
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Adam Sale
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 2:15 AM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[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
