Baking issue (batch bake maya but know that MODO has the same issue

[Zed Tremont]

Hello,

 OK updated, saw the thread again today and it was a big mess, sorry for that but as mentioned below my internet was really bad.

 

This thread might be similar to the issue Crovanti has, sorry but my internet is too bad today, the pictures simply don't want to show.

 

Object: Earring (gold with gemstones) I'm only after the bake of the gold part, render setting still have to be tweaked a bit to optimise the effect.Gemstones are irrelevant and only added to get their reflections (red of ruby)

All normals/edges are softened (smooth) where they should be threated like this.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Used raytracing, reflection, refraction, jitter (to reduce eventual artefacts), UV map clean and show nice even squares while testing with a grid, final gathering

 

Material: (only for baking purposes not to bring in sl of course) mia_material_X

lighting: IBL lighting with B/W gradient + 1 directional light + 2 spotlights

Problem: 1. picture of low polygon version bake.



as could be foreseen The edges oposite of the camera/viewer angle are quite visible and are distorted.

2. Made a high polygon version of some elements for further testing, bake shadows was switched off this time.

pictures taken from 2 different angles





 

 

As can be seen the lines on the oposite of the camera still appear, less heavy but not acceptable. Artefacts increase as the polygons increase, did a further test while still increasing the polycount though artefacts become too problematic then.

Adding lights didn't help either and increased the artefacts too.

 

This is keeping me already a long time busy, been googling, watch whatever tutorial I could find on youtube and digital tutors. There are not many available for sure compared baking compared to rendering. Not illogical either not many engines need this anymore.

 

I'm quite convinced That it has to do with the baking, camera settings as such. Focus/priority (simple said) is given to the camera direction.

Robin Sojourner confirmed this and said that she has the same issue with MODO too. Eventual solution would be to take multiple bakes and make a composition of the "good" parts. (use of masks and painting it nicely to match)

Disadvantages:

1. By moving the cameras your baked reflections change accordingly.

2. Quite a tedious job if you have to do that for complex pieces.

 

Would appreciate it very much if somebody found some way around this issue. I'm slowly out of ideas by now.

Thank you very much in advance,

Zed

[Zed Tremont]

Seems there is not really a ready made solution since till now nobody replied.

Seems to be in the nature of the beast. I've painted the lines manually out in Ps and managed to get them invisible while keeping the same result.

Still interested and searching for a solution but with little hope.

Does anybody has experience with Quixel? How are result with this Ps plugin?

[IvanBenjammin]

I love the Quixel suite - its my new best friend.

I don't use the maya baking tools (I prefer Xnormal for that, despite its retro appearance), but generally speaking, it can be hard to diagnose bake problems from a diffuse and/or ambient occlusion render. Try doing a normal map bake and see what artifacts you get - if those hard edges show up, for example.

[Zed Tremont]

Thank you for your reply Ivan. I will look in Quixel suit don't have that one... yet.

Looked at the materials of the program, there are a lot and seem to be of a very high quality. Have substance painter and designer, ready materials... I'm not so impressed and some of the materials for sale are downright not OK.

Still it is a great and useful tool.

Q if I may: I'm very sure the problem is that the camera takes a correct bake of whatever is visible. The backside, not at all. How is this with Quixel and/or Xnormal.

Will do further testing/painting meanwhile 

[arton Rotaru]

Quixel Suite 2 is pretty similar to Substance Painter 2 IMO. The problem with both of them is that they are targeting PBR engines. Their viewports are PBR as well. For Second Life maps will have to be adjusted to match traditional last gen outputs though. Which will show wrong in the PBR viewports then. You would want to view the maps in a non PBR shader (e.g. Max/Maya/Blender/SL) to get them right.

Non of these tools, nor XNormal bakes reflections/refraction, or any camera angle dependent effects though. Since these are dynamic in real time environments, it's fairly uncommon to bake them anyway. Except for Second Life with ALM off perhaps.

[IvanBenjammin]

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Zed Tremont wrote:

Thank you for your reply Ivan. I will look in Quixel suit don't have that one... yet.

Looked at the materials of the program, there are a lot and seem to be of a very high quality. Have substance painter and designer, ready materials... I'm not so impressed and some of the materials for sale are downright not OK.

Still it is a great and useful tool.

Q if I may: I'm very sure the problem is that the camera takes a correct bake of whatever is visible. The backside, not at all. How is this with Quixel and/or Xnormal.

Will do further testing/painting meanwhile 

---

Using any kind of camera to bake is a new one to me, but maybe that's something you do when you want to capture reflections and specularity? For most baking - ambient occlusion, normal maps, etc etc - you cast rays down the normals of your low poly model, and render whatever it hits on the high poly.

Regarding Quixel: Its not the material library that I love it for. It has a lot of presets, and each update seems to add more, but IMO its power comes from its excellent normal map creation and masking tools. A lot of the presets are nice, but you won't want to use them as-is - as Arton mentions above, they're designed for a different rendering environment.

[Zed Tremont]

Heya, sorry for the late reply and thank you for both your comments.

Indeed both are PBR driven and unfortunately sl is still a quite old engine with in my personal opinion rather poor as it regards normal and specularity render, not mentioning the use of PBR's. Also many if not most people haven't got their advanced lighting on which makes that they want see the effects of the maps.

It has been mentioned that project sansar would allow the use of some form of substances of and on. Let's say it's wait and see what happens there.

Substance painter does have a filter (light baking filter) that allows to bake the specular lights in a diffuse texture. The various options to set your lighting are limited but for quite some materials it works OK seen the limitations of baking in general. It does so in a 360 degrees camera angle which makes it quite interesting for use in sl. Gold however as a pretty though to bake material is not satisfying.

I looked through tutorials/info about Quixel, in many ways it's quite similar to SP, I didn't find info as it regards baking. Perhaps it's at once baked/visible on the texture once your lighting is setup? Would be interested to have some info before I consider a purchase.

 

[Zed Tremont]

Quote"

Non of these tools, nor XNormal bakes reflections/refraction, or any camera angle dependent effects though. Since these are dynamic in real time environments, it's fairly uncommon to bake them anyway.

"unquote

Fully agree that baking these dynamic effects is uncommen and in principle not logical seen we are in a 3D environment. On the other hand it does is possible to bake the reflections/refractions and specular lights in Maya as well as in SP. 

Since it's against 3D logics I presume that it's absolutely no priority for allegorithmics or Autodesk to have a real good look in this. None of the major engines Unity or Unreal needs this kind of solution.