I've got this friend

[Chic Aeon]

HOHO

 

OK this really is a question for someone else, a fairly "big" designer who perhaps (I don't know him well) doesn't want to look like he doesn't know everything. I of course am SO willing to admit that.

Anyway it is a house. He is in Maya. When he uploads the house with the roof (I am assuming joined) he cannot get a bake on the interior walls, ambient or full. If he leaves the roof off all is fine. Now I of course in my newbie wisdom suggested he upload in pieces (I have found the land impact is often lower that way) and then join. Issue "fixed". He doesn't want to seem to do that -- who knows.

He has done me a favor and I would like to reciprocate if I can. If any one knows what the issue might be I can pass that along to him. He has been working in Maya about a month. His build is very nice and quite impressive. I asked if he could walk inside *wink* but didn't get an answer. For him, the big issue is the baking.

 

Thanks in advance. You guys almost always have he answers. Happily I haven't had any issue of late.

[Rolig Loon]

Try moving the lights?  He ought to be able to lower their intensity, move a couple indoors, and get the right shadows.   I'm not the most experienced mesh artist on the block either, but that sounds like it would work.

[Pamela Galli]

Oh, him.

[Frawmusl]

AO he won't get anything due to the roof, of course. The roof is covering the entire interior. So he can bake it without the roof, and then just save the texture and have the roof without a bake (Which won't matter) and the interior with the AO. to combine both the roof and interior to one map (im guessing the bake without the roof covers up the roof texture) he'll just set the roofs map to the old map without an AO and the other objects to the new map with an AO. Then bake "Textures only" and it will bake both textres to a new map. Then can use that single map for everything. Now the other option is to just arrange your full render lights and get the perfect lighting set up I reccommend hemi lights, lots of hemi lights

[Chosen Few]

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Chic Aeon wrote:

When he uploads the house with the roof (I am assuming joined) he cannot get a bake on the interior walls, ambient or full.

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I'm afraid I don't quite understand your wording here, Chic.  Was he unable to create the bake in Maya, or did he create it, and simply cannot apply it in SL?

I can think of a few things that could cause either scenario.  Any more information you can provide would help narrow things down.

 

So you know, I might not be able to respond with my usual level of detail.  I was in an accident, and my right arm is rather uncooperative at the moment.  Typing is painful, so I'll have to keep it brief.  Happy to do what I can, though.  The more info you can get  from your friend, the easier it will be.

[Chosen Few]

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Frawmusl wrote:

AO he won't get anything due to the roof, of course. The roof is covering the entire interior.

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I'm not sure why you'd say that, Fawmust.  AO measures how much light can escape from a surface, not how much light is actually hitting it.  Where surfaces are close together, such as at corners, less light can get out, so those areas darken.  Where surfaces are further apart, such as the middles of walls, more light can escape, so those areas brighten.  This is equally true whether the surfaces in question happen to be horizontal, vertcal, or otherwise. 

The mere fact that a roof will block external directional light from hitting a floor doesn't necessarily mean it will cast AO onto the floor.  It depends how close the two are together, and on the AO settings you're using.   If your experience has been that  roofs/ceilings always exceessively darken your AO bakes, then I'd suggest either your occlusion settings are not right for the sizes of the models you're baking, or perhaps you're including something other than just AO in your render output.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Heya Chic,

kinda same problem for me as Chosen had - the question or problem is not completely clear:

He is in Maya. When he uploads the house with the roof (I am assuming joined) he cannot get a bake on the interior walls, ambient or full. If he leaves the roof off all is fine.

 

Maybe you just expressed that a bit unfortunate ? But i cant understand what the "upload" has to do with creating a texture "bake" for the model. Is it like Chosen asked that he already baked them but he seems to be unable to apply them in SL when the roof is in the same object ( but that's not a bake-fail though )  or does he have issues to bake the maps in Maya ?

If it fails in Maya, what 'kind' of bakes is he trying to do (i know you said AO and full map bakes) but what renderer Vray, Mental Ray, Turtle ? they all have their own quirks to take care of.

One thing that could cause certain bakes to fail - just to give one method indepent suggestion - already when combined would be if the UVs are overlapping and sharing the same texture space / 'and the same image map' that is baked to (i,e, if the Roofs UV areas would overlay parts of the houses UVs) 

If that's not it, and so you have something to give him to look at, while you are hopefully able to get a bit more helping infos out of him ...
... here a link  (lower area goes exactly into baking AO and color for a room with roof and interieur) 
http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-maya/baking-ambient-occlusion-color-and-light-maps-in-maya-using-mentalray-3/

PS: *waves at chosen* it must be this time of the year... i just came back from hospital myself. >.< i hope you're getting better soon!

[Chic Aeon]

Thanks everyone. I actually forgot I wrote this. Been LIVING over at the Home and Garden Expo.

So.  I did ask about the lighting and he said he had plenty of lighting inside. And I did suggest he just upload in sections which is what I do naturally and when I have tested (not often as really don't like the house thing) it seemed to also give lower land impact.

I did ask about what kind of map and he did say AO. I had no idea there were kinds of that in Maya and perhaps he doesn't either LOL.  Whew!

He pulled out his build for me and  he could add a texture to the walls but just a flat one, no AO bake -- completely flat medium gray. Not sure if that was a diffuse color he added or if Maya just does medium gray as a default. I didn't see any other colors on the bare model. As I understand it (he was in voice and I was having a problem hearing him as I don't usually do voice) the problem was with the upload as it would have been obvious if you baked and got nothing -- no point in uploading that. 

I have no idea why he feels he needs to upload it all at one time.

So -- if I get more info I will add to this, but it may just be something he needs to work through or be willing to ask about himself LOL.

I DO appreciate your ideas. 

[Chosen Few]

Thanks for following up, Chic.

To answer your question, Maya does indeed assign a 50% gray Lambert shader to surfaces by default.  If you upload a model that has just that default shader on it, and you try to include textures with the upload, the result in SL will be a model with a blank texture, with a 50% gray tint.

If he wants to apply his AO maps as textures, he'll need to upload those separately, and then apply them, just like any other textures.  This, of course, requires that his UV layouts and material assignments are set up properly to receive the textures, in the desired configuration.

If he wants the AO maps to be already on the uploaded model, as soon as it appears, he'll need to apply them to the approprioate surface shaders in Maya first, so that the .dae file will contain the correct references to them.  If he's using Turtle, this is super easy, as Turtle has a setting to automatically apply baked textures to the model, as soon as the bake finishes rendering.  If he's using any other renderer, then he'll just have to do the assignments by hand (which, needless to say, is fairly trivial).  Otherwise, he can just upload the textures separately, and apply them in-world by hand, which is generally the recommended approach, anyway.

 

All that said, I'm still not quite sure how the presence or absence of a roof is factoring into any of this.  If the roof puts the model at too many materials, or too many vertices, for SL, then he should simply break the model into pieces (or better yet, remodel it so it doesn't need so many resources).  If the roof is screwing up his AO bake, then as I said to Fawmusi, it's likely that either his AO settings are wrong for the size of the model, or he's including more than just AO in the render output.  If it's something else, which we don't yet have enough information to diagnose (which I suspect is the case), then of course, we'll need further explanation.

I'd suggest you invite your friend to post here, and throroghly describe what's going on.  Let him know there's never any shame in asking for help.  I know it can be a matter of pride for some people to find their own answers, but really, if it's a difference of solving a problem in minutes or hours instead of days or weeks, then it becomes shameful not to ask.  Besides, if he really feels strongly that asking for help would be embarrassing, he can always use an alt, and none of us ever need know who he is.

 

If none of the above is acceptable or helpful for him, then as you said, he's just going to have to work it out on his own.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Thanks for adding more Info Chic.

I'll just join Chosen here as he basically went into all the points i would have added at this state as well.

 

It might be really a good idea to get your friend here ( as Alt or as himself - we really don't care =))  and try to describe explicitely his issues with his own words and at what steps, what exactly happens. 

Just as chosen i don't see how the roof would inflict the bakes - other then what i wrote in my former answer if his UV layout would be overlapping and sharing the same diffuse or AO image map. Certain bakes are just not possible with overlapping UVs.

 

Cheers! code

[Leviathan Flux]

I believe I can answer the roof question as this does have an impact as if there is not enough light, or no light getting in, the the whole interior will be too dark.  

There are a number of ways to render an AO with Maya so this process may add a few steps to your workflow.  I usually use mental ray, and in the hypershade, create a new Surface shader material, and then from the mental ray materials, under Textures, select an mib_amb_occlusion and attach it to the surface shader which can then be assigned to the model.  In the attribute editor for your mib_amb_occlusion node, there are a number of parameters to adjust.   For interiors, I usually set the Max Distance to about 2, which sets how far it is picking up shadows from other surfaces.  By default, it's 0 which will be infinite.  Then you can play with the sample rate.  I recommend around 64, or 128 for higher quality, and spread keep below 1.  Then just bake with mental ray for Light and Color and your other usual settings.

If your friend is not familiar with using mental ray, this may take a little more time to get accustomed with.  By default, it needs to be activated in the plug-in menu.  Hope this helps, but if your friend need more specifics, let me know.