Texture Baking tutorials

[mike.edel]

you are wrong regarding VRML capabilities.
You are right : it requires some knowleges about realtime 3D.

Also you must know that the reference you quote : blaxxun viewer and exporter are outdated and havent been updated since 5 years...

Bitmanagement.de owns now and update frequently the viewer and the max exporter.

which VRML capabilities am i wrong about?
i know that vertex animation is possible, but as far as i know the verices' position is sampled depending on your frame rate (f.e. 25 times per second) and saved to the file

as i said, haven't used vrml for some time (last time i used it professionally was about 2000, when most people didn't even have 3d accelerated graphics cards)

was just checking blaxxuns' site and saw that contact (their viewer) was still online. i didnt know it was outdated
ouch, just checked bitmanagement's prices for contact... if i remember correctly the viewer was free when blaxxun was offering it - the same goes for the max exporter which now requires the purchase of the sdk for at least 2000€

[n6]

The price realy depends on who you are and what you are doing.
I know that this is a strange buisness technic but they work like that...
Just drop them a mail asking for the license package price, discribe exactlty what you want to do, and if it is not a one billion dollar project then maybe the license's price could drop down
If you mention that Laurent PRIVAT (me) talked to you about the plugin exporter and SDK it could also help

[Tom B]

Looks good n6.

I use Quest3d a lot, it is a fast DirectX 9 engine and is a node based environment so while some programming concepts are used like loops etc you don't need to write a line of code. The cheapest version is 129 Euros and has all the functionality you need to do walk through .exes. There is also a supportive comunity based around the forum.

[sunnyc1]

Nice example n6. You are quite right, the size of the map depends on the video card you are using. I'm using a Quadro FX 4400 so I've got 512 Mb of Video Ram the play with. Still not enough. The problem is my clientele are running crapping Pentium 4's and even some P3's that barely have 64Mb.

I forgot to mention in my last post that most of the projects we work on are very large scale. I'm talking about over 1 million polys in real time spanning over a couple of buildings. I've found that texture sizes seam to affect real time speed alot more than the amount of polys, but obviously still play a big part. I would go so far as to recommend vertex baking as a better option/combination. If you use Max's radiosity engine bake in the solution. Then swap out what ever diffuse base material you like. Vertex baking replaces the need for a lightmap, although increases the need for more poly's, but like I said before, I'm finding textures are heavier than poly's. Find the medium ground. Doesn't have to all or nothing.

On top of that, our real time stuff isn't used for straight walkthough's. We use EON Studio (www.eonreality.com) to produce content which has interactivity, like opening doors, moving objects, changing individual materials, animated objects (and animated meshes), so
a single lightmap over the whole scene doesn't work for us, regardless of the size. Though I am interested in testing it having seen the posted example.

By the way, anyone producing realtime content for 3D Stereo display like we do, don't forget video memory usage is doubled when going stereo. If you're thinking about using 2048 or 4096 maps, then you really need the top of the line video card if your scene is actually more than just one room. Scenes with just floors, walls and ceilings only tend to be a bit deceptive when analysing video memory usuage. It's kinda like using the Max teapot for testing. It all comes down to how big your scene is and how much detail there will be for final delivery. Also consider future stages of your project. If you use all the available video memory now, you'll have nothing left if you need to add another, building or site to your project.

Although the other posts regarding larger maps sizes are true and achievable, if you have deadlines and client performance expectations to meet, I strongly stick by my suggestion to keep those textures as low as you can. Just look at what the games industry do with their stuff. If they can get away with using lower maps they will.

It's all about efficiency and balance. Good to see so much discussion about baking. Keep it coming.

SunnyC
ivolve studios

[n6]

@sunnyc1
I dont want to hurt you but a 1 milion polys scene isnt a real time 3D scene...
Realtime 3D walkthrough or fly involve a lot more of tech than only push the export button

Its like you where saying that to do a nice vray render, you only need to import the CAD model from Autocad and push RENDER

CAD models are allways full of useless polys and need to be cleaned.

But that is not all : serious realtime 3D walkthrough or fly or examine or what you want, require specifics optimization technics such as Level Of Detail, well organised BSP tree to do optimized culling, Normal Mapping to render a 100000 poly object only using 5000 polys and so one...

I could probably transform your 1 milion polys scene into a 100 000 poly one with exactly the same visual details and lighting quality (if not more ), the same interactivity and it would run very smoothly on a P3 with a Geforce2.

Regarding the stereo display its the geometry that you draw twice, the textures are instanced (if your engine is well programmed).

Regarding the video memory usage there are also a lot of specifics optimizations, one of them is to use DDS compressed textures wich is the native GPU texture format (but you engine must support it) and a lot of other....

[n6]

to illustrate what Normal Mapping can do for you, here is a sample I m working on (ok ok this is not a building but the technic would be the same) :

The full geometry = 950 000 polys





The optimized geometry = 35 000 polys




The optimized geometry that received the Normals infos from the high geometry :





The optimized geometry viewed into the realtime 3D engine (BSContact]

[Dschaga]

looks nice!
i don't know that Contact can do SSS in RT

[n6]

looks nice!
i don't know that Contact can do SSS in RT

Well it could since it supports DirectX9 shaders...

But here SSS is baked and not computed in realtime

[sunnyc1]

Dude, what gave you the impression I haven't already optimised my scene. Besides manually going through and culling all the useless polys not necessary for real time simulation, the program I use (I didn't create it, I'm not smart enough for that) can allow for automated geometry optimisation and texture compression if you're feeling lazy and can't be bothered to do it manually. Level of Detail, real time physics, collision detection, hdr support, DX9 shaders, and more, it's all there. I'm not talking about a simply push one button step.

The time stuff we produce isn't the greatest, but our clients seem to be pretty happy. Anyone interested in seeing examples of good quality real-time VR examples can check out www.eonreality.com being used by some of the big players in Automotive, Medical, Military, Architecture, I.T, etc. I reckon Boeing, Hyundai, Suzuki, etc, would tell you that 1 million+ poly's in a scene DOES count as real-time.

For sure, the P3 engine or the Quake 4 engine would do an awesome job at producing the best real-time results achieveable highly optimised, but unless we are talking about producing content for the P3 or buying an expensive commercial license of Quake 4 (I'm assuming you are producing real-time content for commercial purposes), then I don't see what point you're trying to get at.

Nothing is as simple as pushing 1 button and expecting magic to happen. I certainly hope you aren't inferring that I would be so naive to think so. In fact, I believe you're the only person to mention such a ridiculous line of thought.

Besides, I don't claim to be a programmer, nor am I an expert at real-time scenes. I do however have experience producing them for real projects. That experience is all I'm offering in response to Chris' original post. I hope some of my comments have been useful anyway Chris, regardless of how wrong my suggestions apparently are. I can elaborate anyway when I finally have a chance to catch up with you.

n6, I think SOME of your comments are valid and useful, however, if you feel the need to burn other people's comments because you have nothing better to do, then that's your choice. If I was in a better mood, I'd probably just let this slide, but I rarely have the time to post comments as it is, and when I finally do find the time to try and contribute back to the VRay community, people like you make it easy for me. I simply won't post anymore.

Good luck with the baking guys. I'm sure n6 will be able sort out any other questions that might pop up.

Signing out.

SunnyC
ivolve studios

[jujubee]

N6 - that is phenomenal! That's very impressive.

If you have time, could you please provide us with some general steps as to your methodology?

Side-note - how big is your monitor?!?!?

[n6]

@jujubee

Are you talking about the Normal Mapping?

My monitor is a SAMSUNG SyncMaster 204Ts 20.1" 1600x1200.

[dennis]

@n6:

what packing tool did you use for the posted pictures. is it home rolled ? do you mind to share it. i've been looking for a pixel perfect mapping tool for 3ds max but havent been able to find one.

do you, or anyone for that matter, know the magic setting to make vray pad the seams/edges of the mapped planes when doing RTT. I always get white edges if i have edge padding > 0 and black if 0 ( due to filtering...yea )

[priad]

bravo n6!!

[muzzy]

very nice, n6

[n6]

@n6:

what packing tool did you use for the posted pictures. is it home rolled ? do you mind to share it. i've been looking for a pixel perfect mapping tool for 3ds max but havent been able to find one.

do you, or anyone for that matter, know the magic setting to make vray pad the seams/edges of the mapped planes when doing RTT. I always get white edges if i have edge padding > 0 and black if 0 ( due to filtering...yea )

UV packing is done both by DeepUV + max native one.
The problem while backing with VRay is that you allways get very different results from a simple rendered image.
What I do is I save the IR map from a lots of points of view and then I bake reusing the saved IR map. Its allways gives better results than if you only compute the IR map during the backing process.