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texture baking bump/normal maps

Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 4:26 pm
by RyanScammell
Hi there friends,

I love building procedural textures in octane. That works great for all the videos that I make where I render things out using octane. But a client wants us to convert some of the objects in these videos for use in Sketchfab where one of their customers can rotate the object around in 3D. To do that I have to rebuild the texture using sketchfab's materials. What I'd love to do is to bake out my texture (without shadows) to something that I could just reapply to the UV'd object in sketchfab. I've read through the texture baking process which has worked out great. I'm able to bake the diffuse to the UV using a bake camera. (I light the scene with an white HRDI to give it even lighting.) That works fine. However, I'm not quite sure how to bake out a bump or normal map.

There doesn't seem to be any option of exporting the map for the bump channel, and none of the normal options seem to export what I think of as an actual normal map.

You can see my sample scene here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3u9jg28bdesf ... 1MC6a?dl=0

_v3 is the most relevant.

Do you have any suggestions on how to accomplish this?

Two other quick questions while I have your ear:

1) The main output of the bake texture seems to satisfy what I'm looking for in being able to reapply an image onto the model in a different program. But I'm confused by what "diffuse filter" is. That one seems to be ignoring the variation in color that the dirt shader is applying to the trim of this object.

2) This is unrelated but can anyone direct me to a good tutorial or write up about the best methods of re-combining a multi-pass image in after effects? I have a hard time getting it to rebuild to the beauty pass in a way where the two match appropriately.

Thanks

Ryan

Re: texture baking bump/normal maps

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 3:06 am
by mojave
Hi RyanScammell,

I think what you're looking to bake out is probably the tangent normal pass, which should include all shading normals in tangent space.

When you enable the raw flag for beauty passes your output can be composited as follows:

Code: Select all

diffuse = diffuse_filter * diffuse_raw
reflection = reflection_filter * reflection_raw
refraction = refraction_filter * refraction_raw
transmission = transmission_filter * transmission_raw
You may check this in the docs too:

https://docs.otoy.com/StandaloneH_STA/S ... Passes.htm

I hope that helps.

Re: texture baking bump/normal maps

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 9:55 pm
by RyanScammell
Thanks for your responses Mojave. I've attached a screenshot of the beauty, info, and material pass options within the C4D plug-in. I don't see a tangent normal option. Does that exist only in the standalone? I've tried exporting the shading normals and tangent options but both come out multicolored in a way that I don't believe should work as a normal pass. Is there a different option I should be choosing? I believe I've tried everything relevant in the options included within the plug-in.

As for the multi-pass reconstruction note, I appreciate the breakdown via nuke, but I can't quite figure out how that recombines within After Effects specifically. I've tried constructions utilizing a variety of blend modes to combine the elements you listed, but it's still not coming out quite right. Do you have a better sense of the process of recombining in AE?

-Ryan

Re: texture baking bump/normal maps

Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2018 10:46 am
by pxlntwrk
mojave wrote:Hi RyanScammell,

I think what you're looking to bake out is probably the tangent normal pass, which should include all shading normals in tangent space.

When you enable the raw flag for beauty passes your output can be composited as follows:

Code: Select all

diffuse = diffuse_filter * diffuse_raw
reflection = reflection_filter * reflection_raw
refraction = refraction_filter * refraction_raw
transmission = transmission_filter * transmission_raw
You may check this in the docs too:

https://docs.otoy.com/StandaloneH_STA/S ... Passes.htm

I hope that helps.
Thanks for explanation,

but that does not explain how to bake the normal tangent of an object?

Is there a way to extract relief information from camera baking?

Re: texture baking bump/normal maps

Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2018 3:30 pm
by milanm
Hi

"Tangent normal" (TN) pass is missing (or broken) in the C4D plugin.
"Tangents" pass is actually "Texture tangent" - (Tang). and "Texture tangent" option doesn't do anything now. :roll:

Instead, you can use Infochannels kernel, "Tangent normal" type and enable Bump and Normal mapping.

Or you could, of course, render all passes at once in the Standalone.

Here's the missing pass (TN) in Standalone
TangentNormal.JPG
Cheers
Milan

Re: texture baking bump/normal maps

Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2018 3:43 pm
by pxlntwrk
Many thank you for the confirmation, this will allow me to save time :D

Re: texture baking bump/normal maps

Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2018 3:30 pm
by pxlntwrk
Hi,

the feature seems to be back in c4d octane multipass with 4.011 :D