UE3 - UT3 Baking Normal Maps - Help plz!

[nELsOn]

hey there!

so i was fooling around with max lately, making a 'high'poly mesh using extrude modifiers on an editable poly and then used a simple plane as my low poly mesh.
now the render to texture result is just fine (could maybe use a little more contrast but i can deal with that...) as long as i use the extrude modifier with only positive values. if i use negative values because i want something like scratches or whatever on a surface, these won't show up in the normal map.

is that the way the render to texture function works or is it maybe just a problem that can be solved by using different settings for it?

 

[Cody Lavery]

if your making a flat plane as your low poly object, you can do anything to the high poly object, extrude bevel ffd twist bend turbosmooth push ... F&**ing anything to it, dont be worried about doing something that will not work. thats why 3ds max is awesome and lightwave blows chunks! all hail the autodesk empire.

the trick is to make sure you sandwich the high poly mesh inbetween the projection mesh and the low poly mesh.

i dont mean to be a jerk, but im just going to tell you the process to make a normal map just so you can hear how i do it.

create low poly proxy object (flat plane 1 length and width segements)

create high poly mesh (use greeble modifier its the Shiz!)

click low poly proxy, press 0 to open renderToTexture, click the Pick button in mapping area (should say something like projection next to it), while Pick tool is on select the High Poly Mesh, it should create a projection modifier on the Low poly mesh (in the case of a plane as the low poly object it should look like a blue wireframed plane existing above the original plane you selected).

So now you need to make sure that the high poly object is inbetween the projection plane and the original plane. if you have the high poly object intersect either of these planes it should render as pure red or black.

once the objects are safely sandwiching eachother, scroll down to the area to add the elements or what ever it is and make sure to select normal map, then just go down to the bottom and click render.

Essentially the projection modifier is telling the computer to render from the vantage point of the projection modifiers polygon faces toward the original objects polygon faces.

for some strange reason when using the projection modifier on a mesh it will distort the vertices of the projection object.(Note that projection modifier on a plane creates a blue wireframed plane that has vertices offset in the z axis randomly, flattening the plane will make the projection look better)

hopefully this helps, be grateful the normal maps for unreal arent crap like the normal maps for supreme commander... cause they suck.

 

[nELsOn]

hey, thx. that's pretty much the way it's explained in these tutorials. only, you didn't say anything about a light setup?!

anyway, the mistake was on my side. i screwed up the modifiers (though i can't say when or where) so the result was not what i wanted.
i started everything from scratch and now it works just fine.