3dsmax render-to-texture wont work

[Cyph3r]

im making an oil drum and im trying to generate a normal map + ambient occlusion from teh high res mesh but for some damn reason... i really need help with this. so heres the high poly next to teh low poly



can someone walk me through how to get the normal maps + AO maps, please.

[Tiros]

Sure thing, though you could've looked at Andreis article about it.. but it's quite easy really

1. Unwrap lowpoly model

2. place the lowpoly and the highpoly at the same place so the intersect

3. Press "0" On your keyboard to bring up your RTT menu, enable projection and fix up your projection cage

4. Click the Add button somewhere just below and choose normalmap

5. choose where you weant to save it, name, size etc.

6. make sure you got proper settings in the Render Options.. I prefer to use Hammerslay with the quality of 1 for global supersampling.. and catmull-rom as filter.

7. Bake your textures in the RTT dialouge

8. if red fields show up, you'll have to edit your cage, as it's most likely intersecting with your highpoly. Or, if you get black dots, try using another or no global supersampler at all.

Note that the render window appearing does not show your final normalmap, it's only a sort of preview, the real normalmap is saved at the target location. So if your image is pretty much just black while rendering/baking, it's cause of the lighting in your scene, this will however not efffect your normalmap

Hope that helps.. atleast my fingers got some exercise

Cheers!

[Cyph3r]

why has is came out so crappy ? D:

[sampson]

i've also gotten a render like cyph3r just got then and haven't worked out what it was.
cage?

[Tiros]

Yep, it's due the cage projecting its rays where it shouldn't

If you just pull up the push slider on the cage, the sides will come out fine, except from at the edges, as it not only projects the sides, but also a part of the top. This could be easily fixed by tightening the cage around the highpoly model, especially at the top and bottom.

One will always have to expect a few tweaks to be done in PS though. It's quite easy to edit normalmaps when you go into the different channels.. ie. R G B channels

You'll have to make sure not to get too carried away though, as sometimes it might turn out in unexpected ways while editing it in the different channels

Cheers!

[Cyph3r]

better:


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