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I tried to make the normal map from the high poly M9A1 following this tutorial, but as soon as I pick one high poly model as reference geometry, it goes like this :



Any idea of what could be the reason of this ?

That looks like your cage? Maybe I'm missing something but the cage is very normal

Ok nvm, the result seems alright. It just takes this weird shape right after I add all the high poly objects so I wondered ...

How do you import a normal map in the Materials for 3ds max 9 ? I know it's pretty useless to do this for PR, but I'd like to test my normal map on the low poly model, just in case.

Marmoset toolbag works, or you can just get a shader that does normalmaps decently.

I must say I'm a bit stuck here, so I suppose it comes from the following thing, but I have the feeling I'm missing something bigger :

Why do I get this black background ? I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to have it, am I ?

http://i.imgur.com/Zktd90x.jpg

It comes from your bake settings in max, check the background color that's set in your baking properties

[R-CON]Psyrus wrote:It comes from your bake settings in max, check the background color that's set in your baking properties

Something I can find in the Render to Texture sub windows ?

But there gotta be something terribly wrong :



The cage embraces all the high poly models as it should, I pick them into Reference Geometry, I press Add, and then ...

Press "0" to bring up the projection settings.



Edit: And you should be working with an editable poly, not an editable mesh as the base.

[R-CON]Psyrus wrote:Edit: And you should be working with an editable poly, not an editable mesh as the base.

The editable mesh comes all alone when I importe it.
I actually import the low poly model to a max file where I already have the high poly model in the scene (that's how I bring the low and high poly models together). I export it in .3DS, maybe I should use something else ?

EDIT : NVM, I just discovered I could convert the base to edit poly.

Edit 2 : Didn't help still glitchy as f

'[R-CON wrote:Psyrus;2018247']Press "0" to bring up the projection settings.

Are you actually using 3ds max 9 ? Because there's no such a thing in my software.

KaB wrote:Are you actually using 3ds max 9 ? Because there's no such a thing in my software.

Sorry, no, I'm using 2014 because I'm not modeling for PR:BF2

What you can do, is render to PNG, which will make the background transparent, then fill that with the neutral blue tone that is on most normal maps... although that works too if you just do it with the black background too.

You should make that detail bigger, with the smallish texture resolution we working with here it would end up being a fuzzy mess on the normal, thry to make it bigger so it can be baked down to the normal map.

Another thing is I would suggest you to collapse your modifier stack, definitely not a good idea to keep those edit poly modifiers in there, or use them at all for that matter.

Dont worry about the black background, the tetxure artist can fix that, or you can fill it with blue yourself

Although you shouldnt worry about baking altogether now, first you need to unwrap and pack your UVs. I see you have an unwrap modifier in there, can we see the result you have got so far?

KaB wrote:Something I can find in the Render to Texture sub windows ?

But there gotta be something terribly wrong :



The cage embraces all the high poly models as it should, I pick them into Reference Geometry, I press Add, and then ...

Thats just what happens, it always resets/breaks the cage when you add in new elements to it. Just add in all ref geo at once, then reset the cage, and then expand the cage.

Tim270 wrote:Thats just what happens, it always resets/breaks the cage when you add in new elements to it. Just add in all ref geo at once, then reset the cage, and then expand the cage.

Okay thanks !

lucky.BOY wrote:You should make that detail bigger, with the smallish texture resolution we working with here it would end up being a fuzzy mess on the normal, thry to make it bigger so it can be baked down to the normal map.

Just wanna be sure : you want me to lower the details of this right ? http://i.imgur.com/P9SQz2X.jpg

So should I lower the number of "gaps" ? Or should I make this part totally flat ? (and we'll make it darker on the texture to show there's something here)

lucky.BOY wrote:Another thing is I would suggest you to collapse your modifier stack, definitely not a good idea to keep those edit poly modifiers in there, or use them at all for that matter.

But actually I need it to move the low poly parts away from each others, so that I can clearly see the cage. Should I do it differently ? (I simply followed the tutorial I posted earlier)

lucky.BOY wrote:Although you shouldnt worry about baking altogether now, first you need to unwrap and pack your UVs. I see you have an unwrap modifier in there, can we see the result you have got so far?

Got it ! I'll show the result once you're satisfied about the high poly M7.

KaB wrote: Just wanna be sure : you want me to lower the details of this right ? http://i.imgur.com/P9SQz2X.jpg

So should I lower the number of "gaps" ? Or should I make this part totally flat ? (and we'll make it darker on the texture to show there's something here)

Yeah, lower the number of those small ridges, that will make them larger and hopefully they will bake better as a result of that.

KaB wrote: But actually I need it to move the low poly parts away from each others, so that I can clearly see the cage. Should I do it differently ? (I simply followed the tutorial I posted earlier).

There are two ways you can do this, either by exploding the scene as you have done, or you can bake each lowpoly part individually, and the merge the normalmaps together in Photoshop. The later takes more time to do, but allows you to have different cage settings for each lowpoly object, so it can give you a better result.

lucky.BOY wrote:Yeah, lower the number of those small ridges, that will make them larger and hopefully they will bake better as a result of that.

Is it better ?

I just realised turbosmooth can take smoothing groups in account, and that's a god damn useful feature. So I made the hollows sharp and the edges round. Is it ok ? Should I invert (round hollows and sharp edges) ? Or should I make edges AND hollows sharp ?

lucky.BOY wrote:There are two ways you can do this, either by exploding the scene as you have done, or you can bake each lowpoly part individually, and the merge the normalmaps together in Photoshop. The later takes more time to do, but allows you to have different cage settings for each lowpoly object, so it can give you a better result.

Ok then, I'll bake them one by one.

Looks good to me, you can play around with the little details after you see how the first bake turned out

Ok I think I start to understand how to unwrap properly. I took SG one by one and set the best parameters so that it doesn't look too stretched or too compressed :







I'm just worrying a bit about this shape on the front round :



Is it a big deal ? I don't really know how to get rid of it.

And finally, does the UVW look ok ?

Alot of wasted space there, I suggest making them tighter, that way you can make them bigger on the sheet and fit in more detail.

But won't it stretch the texture if I do that ?

I might fill the rest with the small wings which aren't on the scene yet.

No, since you havent actually textured it yet. if you took say a texture already done and THEN change the shape itll stretch it.