the fastest, cleanest and easiest AO map you will ever bake

[ahopps01]

We got into a discussion on AO baking during the low poly competition and some people were having trouble so I threw this together, a bunch of people liked it and suggested a move to the tut section as well so here you go



I forgot a part, on your Low and High Definition Meshes tab, right click on the "Smooth Normals" property and change it from Use Exported Normals, to Average Normals. <3

[Talon]

I never liked the AO xNormal outputs, they always seem to pixelly ad unsmoothed.

You can see there in your images, the flow of polys of the high poly mesh clearly represented in the AO bake with big stripes across the AO bake, when really it should be nice and even across such large exposed areas.

[samgriffiths]

Could you explain what baking does/changes please, Perhaps this is a dumb question but it would help me alot - I hear people saying things like "Baking Shadows" etc.

[Talon]

It refers to rendering out information from one model to another, usually to the second model's UV map as if it were a texture.

In games, it most commonly refers to the act of baking surface normals (normal maps) or ambiently occluded lighting (ambient occlusion or AO maps) from a highly detailed model onto something that's low poly enough to be used in a game engine (although it extends to any kind of map).

Thus giving the low poly mesh the appearance of being as detailed as the high poly mesh is, when really it's all faked through textures.

[ahopps01]

**********aha**********

I did not set the "Smooth Normals" property to average. It was set to "use exported normals" which of course will end up giving you a slightly faceted look and barely blend each poly together. There is also a setting in "Fine Details" for adding more value to the Smooth and Blend outputs.

[CounterSeal]

I keep seeing xNormal popping up more and more... is this a preferred application when it comes to baking and transferring maps? For example, is xNormal better than Maya when it comes to using Maya's transfer maps feature from a high poly mesh to a low poly to generate a normal map?

Please excuse the noobie questions, because I've only been using Maya's transfer maps for all my high to low poly normal mapping needs. I'm thinking about trying xNormal if it's truly as useful as people suggest.

[laughing_bun]

xnormal always comes up with wierd errors on more complex objects. Using the 3ds max cage is the only way i can get the normals to project right on certain objects.

[ahopps01]

hey laughing bun or talon, can you post your pipeline for max? i swear ive followed max baking tutorials to the T and I have never once gotten a good AO map out of the program, even using just that boot for example. i agree about the uncleanliness with xnormal however when it comes to ease of use, I have never had an easier time. It literally took me 3 minutes to figure out and get an AO map out of xNormal.

[Talon]

I don't use Max for baking stuff unless I really really need a projection cage for a normal map, sorry :/

[samgriffiths]

So to bake, do you need a high poly version of the low poly object you wish to bake?