Nice workflow for exploding the mesh. FYI if you just want to bake shader effects (like rounded edges) you don't need a high res mesh you can just bake the normal directly. Just create a new image map, set it to normal, right click it and click bake to texture. This way you don't have to explode the mesh. Which in the case of rounded edges, not only saves time but can also change the result since modo can also round intersecting meshes.
Indeed. Or I would advice to only explode mesh parts which are physically different objects/parts. This way you keep your parts nicely welded together. Additionally, you only have to add one morph influence, if you add it with both the low and the high selected.
Tried to bake roud edge just by baking to texture as you described - but in my case it does not work. Normal map baking, but result - one color(flat) map. What am I doing wrong?
I see a problem with this method I could use some help with. "Local" mode, afaik, only works on components not items themselves. The problem is that when you have a high poly encompassing several elements using the RoundedEdgeS. all of these elements do not "stick to their relative position with each other" when using the "Local" morph. Is there a way around this ?
Thanks for the great video Steve! I haven't known about the trick with local action center - it's much faster than manually explode it all! It looks like the size of your model is quite big (30cm grid) regarding to the original size. Is there a reason for this? Probable it's because of round edge shader? I'm asking becauseI had some issues with baking round edge shader with low resolution normal map or with small values of width of round edge shader .
Hi Anthony. Oops yeah, my grid was set to 30cm because I actually just reinstalled Windows recently and hadn't set up my units yet in Modo before I made the video. If you look at the image here, you can see while my grid size is set to 30 cm, the model itself is only about 2 meters tall which is roughly human sized tall: www.screencast.com/t/eWZomaEi so its pretty close to real world scale. I actually did scale it up just slightly because I have also heard some people have had issues with scale and the rounded edge shader. Unreal Engine unit is equal to 1 cm so I typically set my grid scale in units of 50 depending on what I'm building.
A cage is an option but in this case since we are baking from exactly the same mesh there is probably not much benefit. A cage makes sense when the low res mesh doesn't match the high res mesh 100%, the cage is essentially creating a ranged space that is trying to capture all the details contained within the high res mesh. In this case, I don't think a cage would be of much benefit.
90 degree angles don't necessarily need to be split, its just about where you determine you want a smoothing split on your model and designate as such in your vertex normal. The important rule is, if you have a smoothing split in your mesh, you'll want a UV seam but a UV seam elsewhere in the model doesn't have to have a smoothing split associated with it.
The reason for the uv split along a smoothing split has to do with the way the normals are aligned along a smoothing split in the map. If you dont separate the mesh in the uv map, you will see artifacts in the bake due to the way the normals are facing. This is regardless of the synthed workflow.
If you use only soft edges you don't need to think about any of that - at least for a Subtance Painter/UE4 workflow. Just make sure you triangulate > make all edges soft > create mikkt tangent space. In the fbx export settings, set it to keep smoothness. Don't recalculate when importing. Tadaa. You can do whatever you want with your UVs
Nice workflow for exploding the mesh.
FYI if you just want to bake shader effects (like rounded edges) you don't need a high res mesh you can just bake the normal directly. Just create a new image map, set it to normal, right click it and click bake to texture. This way you don't have to explode the mesh. Which in the case of rounded edges, not only saves time but can also change the result since modo can also round intersecting meshes.
Ok thanks for the tip I will have to try that.
Indeed. Or I would advice to only explode mesh parts which are physically different objects/parts. This way you keep your parts nicely welded together.
Additionally, you only have to add one morph influence, if you add it with both the low and the high selected.
Anne Draaisma only the parts that arent connected are exploded.
Tried to bake roud edge just by baking to texture as you described - but in my case it does not work. Normal map baking, but result - one color(flat) map. What am I doing wrong?
make sure the texture locator of the created texture points to the right uv and all mesh layer you want to bake are marked as visible
Thank You very much, Steve.
Great video Steve!
Awesome video as always, but Modo really needs a way to bake by mesh name...
I see a problem with this method I could use some help with. "Local" mode, afaik, only works on components not items themselves. The problem is that when you have a high poly encompassing several elements using the RoundedEdgeS. all of these elements do not "stick to their relative position with each other" when using the "Local" morph. Is there a way around this ?
Thanks for the great video Steve! I haven't known about the trick with local action center - it's much faster than manually explode it all!
It looks like the size of your model is quite big (30cm grid) regarding to the original size. Is there a reason for this? Probable it's because of round edge shader? I'm asking becauseI had some issues with baking round edge shader with low resolution normal map or with small values of width of round edge shader .
Hi Anthony. Oops yeah, my grid was set to 30cm because I actually just reinstalled Windows recently and hadn't set up my units yet in Modo before I made the video. If you look at the image here, you can see while my grid size is set to 30 cm, the model itself is only about 2 meters tall which is roughly human sized tall: www.screencast.com/t/eWZomaEi so its pretty close to real world scale. I actually did scale it up just slightly because I have also heard some people have had issues with scale and the rounded edge shader.
Unreal Engine unit is equal to 1 cm so I typically set my grid scale in units of 50 depending on what I'm building.
Is there any benefit in using a cage when baking like this?
A cage is an option but in this case since we are baking from exactly the same mesh there is probably not much benefit. A cage makes sense when the low res mesh doesn't match the high res mesh 100%, the cage is essentially creating a ranged space that is trying to capture all the details contained within the high res mesh. In this case, I don't think a cage would be of much benefit.
Thanks for the video! I wanted to clarify: All hard edges (90 degree angle, etc) should be a UV seam?
90 degree angles don't necessarily need to be split, its just about where you determine you want a smoothing split on your model and designate as such in your vertex normal. The important rule is, if you have a smoothing split in your mesh, you'll want a UV seam but a UV seam elsewhere in the model doesn't have to have a smoothing split associated with it.
Thanks!!
But if we have synth workflow (the same tangent basis both in baking software and the engine) we can ignore this rule, right?
The reason for the uv split along a smoothing split has to do with the way the normals are aligned along a smoothing split in the map. If you dont separate the mesh in the uv map, you will see artifacts in the bake due to the way the normals are facing. This is regardless of the synthed workflow.
If you use only soft edges you don't need to think about any of that - at least for a Subtance Painter/UE4 workflow. Just make sure you triangulate > make all edges soft > create mikkt tangent space. In the fbx export settings, set it to keep smoothness. Don't recalculate when importing. Tadaa. You can do whatever you want with your UVs