Normalmaps

Since I am a Zbrush lover now I decided to do more research on when I can use normal maps and displacement maps. Normal maps don't seem to be used in full animations and more often in games due to the in-ability to render AO passes properly but I figured using it for low level details like fabrics and generating a normalmap for that would be awesome.

Best tip of the day in that tutorial -

[Implementation] Obtaining Clean Results Using Hybrid maps

Baking - hybrid smooth/unsmoothed tangents using vertex normals (xNormal, maya) / smoothing groups. (max)

1. UV borders should generally be converted to hard edges, this dramatically reduces smoothing errors. (with no seam problems)

2. To reduce smoothing errors in an area, you can either split the uv map and introduce more hard edges - or manually round the geometry.

3. Experiment with your baking package to see how far you can push it - xNormal bakes for example have less smoothing errors than 3ds max bakes.

Here is a link to a good tutorial and a snippet I think I should keep in mind.

Area Autodesk Normal Map Tutorial

BRDF Type for Vray

My brain fucking hurts. My world is no longer what I remember. I was reading up on material BRDF on Vray trying to get more information. And it is not what I/we remember.

Apparently, this might be the new world order. Say hello.

Blinn= Matte
Phong = Glossy
Ward = Metal

Vray Renderfarm

Change License Settings

Type the IP address of the computer that has the dongle to link to it.

Launch V-Ray license Server

Launch this on the machine that has the dongle so that other machines will link to it and call up the license.

Launch V-Ray render slave

For distributed rendering after clicking on the distributed button in the scene. All machines with this will handle a bucket square.

Backburner

Manager

Distribution machine launches this application.

Monitor

Distribution machine will also require this to keep track of renders.

Server

All rendering machines will launch this and link the IP address to the appropriate server machine.

*Important

Setup a hard-drive for all computers to have complete access. No passwords and usernames.

*Possibility of workgroup, username and password may need to be the same.

Zbrush Pipeline

Been testing my Maya 2010 -> Vray 1.5 with Zbrush 4 pipeline. Results haven't been completely stellar but we are getting there. Typing out my solution to remember.

Model a standard polygon model in Maya and maintain quads. If there is a hole in the model. Go to Tool -> Geometry -> Crease

Subdivide once if geometry has triangles to turn model into a 100% quad model. Use this subdivided version as level 1 now if this has been done.

Now -
Tool -> UV Map -> Delete UV
Tool -> UV Map -> AUVTiles

Do you painting and export the lowest level mesh as .obj
Now go to your lowest level of the model and to create the displacement map

Tool -> Displacement Map (use adaptive and smooth UV options on)

Now in photoshop
Edit -> Color Settings -> Gray -> Gray Gamma 2.2 (If done right. The gray value in the background areas of that texture will be kept at 129.)
Image -> Image Rotation -> Flip Canvas Vertical

Now Save the file with options "As a Copy" & check the "ICC Profile: Gray Gamma 2.2"

Links below included a reply from Cgbeige -> this allows you to scale the model and have the displacement maps hold up.

CgTalk

Cloth Galore - SYOG

Okay so we just almost wrapped up the Singapore Youth Olympic Games project. We provided quite a bit of the actual game day graphics and there was a big part of cloth, clouds and after effects involved. I will post the results but there are a lot of questions I have about cloth that has been left un-answered. Leaving this post here for me to remember and fill it up.

Most of the problems came from caching, projection of UV's after the fact and also the use of the animate along path. I think there is a bug somewhere in the process. SOMEWHERE!.

Seemingly Unrelated Links

They seem unrelated cause they aren't. Personal good stuff for myself to keep in mind.

White Papers

Render Pass Concepts and Techniques

*This white paper explains how to use the Maya render pass framework. The covered topics include: rendering pipeline efficiency, configuring and customizing render passes, and how to composite render passes. The examples show how to leverage render passes to achieve efficient compositing workflows for common rendering, lighting and look tuning tasks.

Mac Batch Privilege/lock conversion tool.

BatChmod

*I do love apple. Even freeware for it is awesome. Simple rights management conversion tool for locked file systems due to files carried from user to user.

Turn off render - Primary Visibility

Z wrote this. Enjoy. =)


string $things[] = `ls - sl`;

for ($lol in $things){

setAttr ($lol + ".primaryVisibility") 0;


}