jchmack
27-08-2008 06:06:57
One of my artists is trying to get his model to look turbosmoothed. I told him that the engine itself couldn't handle it but he could use the smoothed mesh as a high res mesh and generate a normal map to be used with the basemesh. I remember someone having similar problems in the ofusion section but i cant find the thread.
I kinda know what to tell him but Im not sure of the process though.
What should i tell him?
he needs to use the texture baking tools. You select a source object, the one that has turbosmooth on. And the destination object to project to. Only the Low poly recieving mesh needs proper UV coordinates. Then you set up your projection cage with an offset that produces clean results and render a normal map.
you have to avoid right angles and need some bevel, chamfers since the projection doesn't like sharp edges, and chamfers need to be big enough to get pixel space on the normal map texture you end up with.
It's often best to have as few smoothing groups as possible on the low poly mesh, OK to have edges where say a backpack attaches to the body and you want a distinct crease but its best to keep a single smoothing group per object.
You almost always have to clean up the normal map in photoshop afterwards, so even though the texture layers for shaders are often simpler with no lighting or shadows it takes some time to get the normal maps cleaned up, and normal maps often need to be quite large to get enough detail.
There's a good Autodesk DVD for advanced texturing for games, done by an artist at Ubisoft. I bought it for about $20 and it made everything so much more straightforward compared to text and illustrations. Lots of good tips and tricks, shortcuts for normal mapping too
