P17 Notes 2:13 Normal Texture Image Setup 2:47 New Window (Yes I actually managed to delete my right viewport window lol) 3:41 Non-Color color space for Normal Maps 4:55 Bake Settings 7:30 Texture node to bake to must be selected on the shader editor 10:18 Requires an extra node! (Can't connect yellow node to purple) 11:02 Don't forget to save/export normal With a different extrusion and the normal map node it turned out pretty well! I think I got the hang of the baking work flow, thank you so much!
I first watched this video like a hundred projects ago and I still find myself coming back and learning/relearning. Thanks grant for the free education.
Wow! I just baked my normal map and it turned out fantastic! (Although, there are some areas which are green, but they are the inside part, thus not visible at all). Cant believe i baked a perfect normal map! All thanks to your teaching! Right now...my lowpoly mesh is sitting at around 5K tris. Feeling proud of myself :P
you sir are a a blessed soul for providing such a detailed explanation on how to LP, UV and bake. i have done many tutorials and all failed to work in 3.4 or didnt work well enough. glad for you to grab a coffee on me thanks again!
I can't believe I got this far without messing it all up even though I'm proggressing really slow! 😅 The normal map turned out amazing, I just have some yellow-green at some of the runes but other than that i'm really satisfied! Hopefully I'll be able to fix that too. I feel the need to thank you so much for this series again!
Another informative video 😁. I appreciate how in each video your taking in feedback you've been getting and apply that to the tutorial. I've learned a few new tricks during this series. Thank you
Thank you, Grant. I actually thought you'd pre-recorded the entire series and were releasing it piecemeal, so that came as a surprise at the beginning.
At around 1:45 yeah, space between islands can be a concern in any 3D engine. Because anything which is subject to mipmapping will halve that gap with each step in level-of-detail. Some people will put 8px between islands, or 16px.. a power of two basically. Of course it depends on the resolution of your map--also there might be a level-of-detail where you stop minding any overlap! (with a 2048 map, >=8px gaps will get you no overlap when it hits 256) Mipmapping goes hardware level, it also makes distant things look better. So you don't want to ignore it _too_ much by say, disabling it for all your intricate props and weapons. But while making the prop? Well I'd only say to make sure that island which has the runes on head of the axe, is 8px apart from other stuff! Maybe 16px. Funny trick: let's say you want a gap of a certain amt of pixels--16px--and your uv coords in blender are in 0.0->1.0 range instead of pixels. You can put "16/2048" or similar, to convert to decimal! This is useful for the unwrap menu, which will not take pixel values in the "padding" field. Mipmaps work in powers of two!!
Loving the series so far! Are you also going to do a video about using creases vs support loops? This is usefull if you model is for a movie and you really need super high detail.
Thanks so much for this! I finally decided to tackle normal maps and the results are such an improvement! One thing is that the details on the face look a little grainy compared with the HD model. I did use a 2k image so not sure why this might be happening. The face count on the high poly version is pretty high, but should it be even higher? Does some resolution get "lost in translation" during baking?
I'm still kinda new to blender but dose anyone know if this is a good proses for character animation? would a low poly character modle play nice with a high poly bake?
I know this video is one year old, but I have a question regarding the smoothing of mesh before the bake - 1. Do all objects have to be smoothed (high and low poly) or only low poly one? 2. Smoothing meshes is considered to be done as a step before any type of baking? For example - ambient occlusion? These videos Grant did helped me improve a lot, but texturing and retopology are rabbit hell holes for me.. lol
First, many thanks for your course. I'm gonna go crazy. The first time I got the bakes, but it had edges within the geometry and an unclosed face. I fixed everything and when I bake again, I get multiple colors. I don't have the image created as alpha. I even went back to the previous file with the geometry to fix and I still get the bakes with strange colors, like a rainbow. I can't fix it, please help.
@@grabbitt Thx for your time Grant. Its all correct and checked. In fact, the first time i got a correct normal map with odd edges messing around all the map because unclosed faces. When i got fixed all, i tried again and got a almost good map, but strange colors (all but purples). Then i tried the previous file i got the correct normal map with the issues again and, when i try again the bakes, i got the normal "colored" map and the odd edges. Its nonsense :( All the time, ray distance is 0 (in Blender 2.92), i have the same like your video, my axe is almost like yours. Anyway, thanks for your time and help, greetings and sorry for my english :)
This was happening to me, too. I did all sorts of different tests with the ray distance, triple checked my normals and recalculated them a ton. Took off auto smoothing and turned it back on, etc. etc. etc. and no success. I did finally get a decent looking map, but even then, it looked like garbage on my character. I wonder if my project is buggy or something.
What does it mean when you are in the UV Editor and it takes points from your selection and puts them in the bottom left corner of the screen while dragging a large solid-colored area down to them?
In the latest version there is no extrusion option under selected to active, should i use ray by distance instead which does the same thing i believe ?
hello Mark I have an unrelated question. They asked for character design for a job interview and it should consist of no more than 5k triangles. when I retopo ı loose all the details.The ı think ı can use shrinkwrap and multiresolution methods but when ı use them thats look detailed but in edit mode they look like raw retopo version. Is this way okey for game engine optimizaiton or I have to bake normal maps ? Because the company is working on games and they tight about the 5 thousand limit. Thank you in advance.
finally I reached this step. but when I baked my low poly, the Image texture progress wont come out down there. The status bar said "No active image found in material". i dont know which step I missed. overall nice tutorials. I've been followed some video in your palylist and I amaze with the outcome. GBU
@@grabbitt I just started from beginning file that I saved and follow the video. and its going well. its prety weird but so far so good. thanks for your reply. have a nice day♥️
My Normal map looks fine, but when I look at the low poly axe in the viewport, some of the sharp lp edges are still very clearly visible... Is there something that I have done wrong? During the retopo phase I moved some of the verts around so the high poly model isn't visible anymore (without snapping enabled) - is that what caused it? Great tutorial btw :)
I don't get why you tend to put all of the textures for a model on one singular image. I guess it's not a huge thing for props, but when it comes to characters I know for a fact most models have things split out into different maps to allow for higher detail in certain areas (i.e. face, body. accessories hair). In this case, I would have completely separated the axe head from the shaft in terms of texture assignment so that your 2k maps could be used to get all of that nice runic carving in there without it being compacted down to a ~1600x1024 area on the shared texture.
@@grabbitt Yeah, you're probably right. Just seems easier for material assignment in my head, but there's not a whole lot going on here other than "metal, cloth, wood."
Excellent tutorial. Love It. But I have a situation, when I bake the normal map, at first glance it looks good, but when applied to the model one face looks darker than the other. In fact, a clear division is observed in the UV cuts. I think it has to do with the orientation of each UV island. Any advise?
@@grabbitt Yes, "non-color" and tangent space. Tried another simple object and got the same problem, it appears to be something with UV island orientation. Turning the island upright improves the look, but the UV cut edge still has color differences.
Tried baking the normals of a character at least 20 different ways, and had no success unfortunately. Even when the normal map turned out nicely, it looked awful on my low poly mesh. 😔
Please put these tuts as one file not 17 - this is how you lose followers, not because you don’t have something to teach me but because overposting a subject I’m not interested in becomes junk in my feed -
i do see you point Shawn which is why i am trying to release a few other videos along side this one. also its easier for people to find stuff in shorter well titled videos.
Amazing, I can't believe you are doing this for free, I hope you do more series like this, I'm learning so much, thank you!!
P17 Notes
2:13 Normal Texture Image Setup
2:47 New Window (Yes I actually managed to delete my right viewport window lol)
3:41 Non-Color color space for Normal Maps
4:55 Bake Settings
7:30 Texture node to bake to must be selected on the shader editor
10:18 Requires an extra node! (Can't connect yellow node to purple)
11:02 Don't forget to save/export normal
With a different extrusion and the normal map node it turned out pretty well!
I think I got the hang of the baking work flow, thank you so much!
I first watched this video like a hundred projects ago and I still find myself coming back and learning/relearning. Thanks grant for the free education.
Wow! I just baked my normal map and it turned out fantastic! (Although, there are some areas which are green, but they are the inside part, thus not visible at all).
Cant believe i baked a perfect normal map! All thanks to your teaching!
Right now...my lowpoly mesh is sitting at around 5K tris. Feeling proud of myself :P
This is so amazing, I feel it is like black magic when the map is baked and set up in the normals node.
you sir are a a blessed soul for providing such a detailed explanation on how to LP, UV and bake. i have done many tutorials and all failed to work in 3.4 or didnt work well enough. glad for you to grab a coffee on me thanks again!
I can't believe I got this far without messing it all up even though I'm proggressing really slow! 😅 The normal map turned out amazing, I just have some yellow-green at some of the runes but other than that i'm really satisfied! Hopefully I'll be able to fix that too. I feel the need to thank you so much for this series again!
I just love this series. Right now im learning blender with those video and its really great stuff. Thank you so much for this.
Too right, those bloody corners were tricky to figure out when I first started with Blender!
True 😅
Another informative video 😁. I appreciate how in each video your taking in feedback you've been getting and apply that to the tutorial. I've learned a few new tricks during this series. Thank you
Wow, finally someone was able to explain baking to me. Thank you a lot!
Thank you, Grant. I actually thought you'd pre-recorded the entire series and were releasing it piecemeal, so that came as a surprise at the beginning.
And Happy Birthday!!! 🎉🎉🎉
At around 1:45 yeah, space between islands can be a concern in any 3D engine. Because anything which is subject to mipmapping will halve that gap with each step in level-of-detail.
Some people will put 8px between islands, or 16px.. a power of two basically. Of course it depends on the resolution of your map--also there might be a level-of-detail where you stop minding any overlap!
(with a 2048 map, >=8px gaps will get you no overlap when it hits 256)
Mipmapping goes hardware level, it also makes distant things look better. So you don't want to ignore it _too_ much by say, disabling it for all your intricate props and weapons. But while making the prop? Well I'd only say to make sure that island which has the runes on head of the axe, is 8px apart from other stuff! Maybe 16px.
Funny trick: let's say you want a gap of a certain amt of pixels--16px--and your uv coords in blender are in 0.0->1.0 range instead of pixels. You can put "16/2048" or similar, to convert to decimal! This is useful for the unwrap menu, which will not take pixel values in the "padding" field. Mipmaps work in powers of two!!
Wow great axe model
Amazing as usual! This course is exactly what I need! Btw it would be nice to see a series about Substance painter and Designer as well :)
Fck them go Blend)
we love you Grant
Magnificient, Thank you SO much!
Incredibol! Thanks Grant
Very good explanation ! 🎉
Man, you saved my career!
Loving the series so far!
Are you also going to do a video about using creases vs support loops? This is usefull if you model is for a movie and you really need super high detail.
maybe eventually
How do I click the like button more than once!? Sooo helpful, thank-you!
That really helped! Thank you very much!
O man, this series crossed fast and furious parts, 😂😂🤞lol @Grant ❤️
You should always triangulate your low poly mesh before baking.
Thanks A Lot.
Tnx man you are helping greatly!
2:50 so true
relatable
Very cool, thank you bro
Ur tuts R best man !!!
My extrusions are also translating on low poly mesh...giving high contrast splashes on low poly map...
Can u please give the solution
I have also done by triangulating my low poly mesh before baking
And
By baking objects separately
have you fixed it then. I'm not sure i completely understand the issue
@@grabbitt no not fixed.
I can send you the snapshots
If you give me your email address
Any advice for fixing weird grayish lines around the edges of the axe? seems to be my only issue
Probably ray distance
@@grabbitt Where is the ray distance tab? I am used to suing substance painter
great bake!
дуже добре perfect!!
Thanks, very helpful video! Keep going!)
Thanks so much for this! I finally decided to tackle normal maps and the results are such an improvement! One thing is that the details on the face look a little grainy compared with the HD model. I did use a 2k image so not sure why this might be happening. The face count on the high poly version is pretty high, but should it be even higher? Does some resolution get "lost in translation" during baking?
It's tricky to say. You can use the 32bit float option to get higher quality
@@grabbitt ok, I’ll try that!
Thanks
I'm still kinda new to blender but dose anyone know if this is a good proses for character animation? would a low poly character modle play nice with a high poly bake?
I know this video is one year old, but I have a question regarding the smoothing of mesh before the bake - 1. Do all objects have to be smoothed (high and low poly) or only low poly one? 2. Smoothing meshes is considered to be done as a step before any type of baking? For example - ambient occlusion? These videos Grant did helped me improve a lot, but texturing and retopology are rabbit hell holes for me.. lol
Yes both meshes must be smooth shaded
Wasn't expecting an answer from the man himself. Thank you!!
4:33 you select the individual parts in the tabs, whenever I try to it tries to select everything below, how do I only select the ones I need
use ctrl not shift
First, many thanks for your course.
I'm gonna go crazy. The first time I got the bakes, but it had edges within the geometry and an unclosed face. I fixed everything and when I bake again, I get multiple colors. I don't have the image created as alpha.
I even went back to the previous file with the geometry to fix and I still get the bakes with strange colors, like a rainbow.
I can't fix it, please help.
That's probably ray distance but check th we no doubles or reverse normals
@@grabbitt Thx for your time Grant. Its all correct and checked. In fact, the first time i got a correct normal map with odd edges messing around all the map because unclosed faces. When i got fixed all, i tried again and got a almost good map, but strange colors (all but purples).
Then i tried the previous file i got the correct normal map with the issues again and, when i try again the bakes, i got the normal "colored" map and the odd edges. Its nonsense :(
All the time, ray distance is 0 (in Blender 2.92), i have the same like your video, my axe is almost like yours.
Anyway, thanks for your time and help, greetings and sorry for my english :)
This was happening to me, too. I did all sorts of different tests with the ray distance, triple checked my normals and recalculated them a ton. Took off auto smoothing and turned it back on, etc. etc. etc. and no success. I did finally get a decent looking map, but even then, it looked like garbage on my character. I wonder if my project is buggy or something.
What does it mean when you are in the UV Editor and it takes points from your selection and puts them in the bottom left corner of the screen while dragging a large solid-colored area down to them?
I think it means they are doubles
In the latest version there is no extrusion option under selected to active, should i use ray by distance instead which does the same thing i believe ?
Yes ray distance instead
@@grabbitt Thanks a lot !!
it's quite hard, is there any other way that i can bake a normal map without making low poly version of the axe?
No
hello Mark I have an unrelated question.
They asked for character design for a job interview and it should consist of no more than 5k triangles.
when I retopo ı loose all the details.The ı think ı can use shrinkwrap and multiresolution methods but when ı use them
thats look detailed but in edit mode they look like raw retopo version. Is this way okey for game engine optimizaiton or I have to bake normal maps ? Because the company is
working on games and they tight about the 5 thousand limit.
Thank you in advance.
you need a normal map yes or you paint on details
finally I reached this step. but when I baked my low poly, the Image texture progress wont come out down there. The status bar said "No active image found in material". i dont know which step I missed. overall nice tutorials. I've been followed some video in your palylist and I amaze with the outcome. GBU
select the image texture in the low poly material
@@grabbitt I just started from beginning file that I saved and follow the video. and its going well. its prety weird but so far so good. thanks for your reply. have a nice day♥️
My Normal map looks fine, but when I look at the low poly axe in the viewport, some of the sharp lp edges are still very clearly visible... Is there something that I have done wrong? During the retopo phase I moved some of the verts around so the high poly model isn't visible anymore (without snapping enabled) - is that what caused it? Great tutorial btw :)
you may need to add some cuts in to smooth the low poly out
@@grabbitt okay, I‘ll try that out. And thanks a lot for the quick answer :))
Hi! What's the difference between Extrusion and Ray Distance? I see you don't use ray distance, while other people use it unstead of extrusion.
I think ray distance had been renamed extrusion
@@grabbitt well, there are both options exist in 2.92.
I don't get why you tend to put all of the textures for a model on one singular image. I guess it's not a huge thing for props, but when it comes to characters I know for a fact most models have things split out into different maps to allow for higher detail in certain areas (i.e. face, body. accessories hair). In this case, I would have completely separated the axe head from the shaft in terms of texture assignment so that your 2k maps could be used to get all of that nice runic carving in there without it being compacted down to a ~1600x1024 area on the shared texture.
Could do but there doesn't seem to be a need here
@@grabbitt Yeah, you're probably right. Just seems easier for material assignment in my head, but there's not a whole lot going on here other than "metal, cloth, wood."
how do I get it to bake if its saying uninitialized image?
Check my baking playlist
Excellent tutorial. Love It. But I have a situation, when I bake the normal map, at first glance it looks good, but when applied to the model one face looks darker than the other. In fact, a clear division is observed in the UV cuts. I think it has to do with the orientation of each UV island. Any advise?
Have you got non colour data selected
@@grabbitt Yes, "non-color" and tangent space. Tried another simple object and got the same problem, it appears to be something with UV island orientation. Turning the island upright improves the look, but the UV cut edge still has color differences.
strange it should be pretty seamless
@@grabbitt is there a way to send you some images?
Hello-I have a question: What determines when? or do we use normal or displacement map?
you can use both but mainly a displacement map is there when polycount doesn't matter as much
Interesting i always thought normal maps should stay as sRGB because they are colored not greyscale. Confusing.
Yes it's strange
Tried baking the normals of a character at least 20 different ways, and had no success unfortunately. Even when the normal map turned out nicely, it looked awful on my low poly mesh. 😔
Yes if it's too low poly it doesn't work well. Also remember to set to non colour data
@@grabbitt I have been, thanks! Is it better to split up more complex objects instead of trying to bake it all at once?
isn't there a loss of information by using non-color?
no. You cant use colour with normal maps
Can I bake having custom normals??
Yes
@@grabbittThanks for the reply!!! I also have another question. I'm having some trouble baking normals, dunno If ask this question.
cooool
Please put these tuts as one file not 17 - this is how you lose followers, not because you don’t have something to teach me but because overposting a subject I’m not interested in becomes junk in my feed -
i think your in the minority there. shorter vids are easier to follow along
For research purposes the shorter vids are better ; not a 3-hour video
u are def in the minority dog. been loving this series. keep it up grant :)
i do see you point Shawn which is why i am trying to release a few other videos along side this one. also its easier for people to find stuff in shorter well titled videos.