No idea on my end... Also, how is it so far? Not sure why there is a yellow object on the right.
Hey Fenes,
For the first image, it looks like either there are some sharp edges that should be smooth, or the subsurf (if you have one) is getting pinched in that area.
For the yellow splotch, it must be hitting the back of a face instead of the front, which would result in the complete opposite of the regular blue.
Ok, I managed to fix that green area (I think) but it has a small area that is purple-ish. Is that normal?
Also, I have the suspicion that the reason for that weird curve is because of the high-poly but it has not sharp edges applied. What can I do?
EDIT: Actually, it happens in every area where there is a curve. They are supposed to be smooth but are not.
No, they are not beveled on the high poly, I checked.
Also, for some reason baking suddenly has suddenly become INCREDIBLY slow. I got more than halfway through baking all of the objects twice and it keeps getting longer and then it crashes. It took 20 minutes to bake on one object.
I have an i5 2500k, a GTX 970 and 16 gigs of RAM. I don't think this should be happening.
One more thing. Is there a way to automatically do all the steps? It's quite cumbersome making a cage, displacing it and so on for every object.
Arrrgh...This is driving me nuts :(
So I was just finishing the painfully long baking (and yes, it is set to GPU). My PCs fans were just in overdrive mode for some reason. Anyway, on the last two objects, I started getting artifacts and no matter what I do, it stays the same. THEN, I rebaked another object that had some other artifacts (but was mostly alright) and it applied the green artifacts on it too. I didn't change anything on that one. What is going on :(? I really want to finish this already. The only clue I have that my C drive has only 700 mb left (for some reason). It's almost as if the program can't finish baking and stops at a specific color?
Can you please take a look at the file? I have no clue what to do next. The baking is getting even slower and every bake I make has artifacts that didn't appear before, even after clearing up some space.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=17GhMnF22Bhp57RZWn4HDJT1CHQRVrs8p
Ok, so that seems like a bug. I baked it multiple times (also super slow on my PC) and got the same bad result. I did manage to get a better result by setting the extrusion to 0 and switching to CPU rendering, which in theory should not have any effect whatsoever. It still took ages though, but by copying and pasting the objects into a fresh .blend file, I was able to bake much, much faster and without error.
Thanks! Is it possible to copy everything so I don't have to manually reset the layers, groups and so forth? Also asking this for future reference because I will very likely work on even more complicated objects in the near future.
Also, if I do this, will I have to StartManualUnwrap in TextureAtlas again?
Oh, and finally, how do I fix those curves? There is no bevel on the curved edges.
Well, I wish that was the end of my troubles but it is not.
I did as you asked, and as a trial, I attempted to bake just one object before importing all the others. It worked, I then imported the others but then the exact same problem came back!! It's driving me nuts :(
Can you take a look at the new file?
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gtnIM0mgTnzDt1jDLPnND158wFKVeY0m
Right,
So now I tried copying each group to a new .blend file and individually baked each piece, to see if there were any problems with any specific models. It started ok, then got progressively slower and when I was done with about 80% of the models the Pistol_Top group got the artifact. After that, I tried rebaking a group that I had already baked and it came out wrong.
The first time this happened it also happened when I was almost done.
This is all really strange :/
Ok, this is super weird and clearly not working as intended. I feel like I may have even run into this in the past in one of my tests, but just ignored it as an anomaly and moved on to something else. I'll take a look at the new file when I get back to my PC, but I would also recommend reporting this as a bug: https://developer.blender.org/
I appreciate that you tried at least. Seems like a tough bug to crack.
Anyway, a thought crossed my mind. Could it be because all the small details that are going to be baked on the normal map are separate? Could this cause memory issues? I mean the program has to load each detail individually. Would making them all one object solve the problem?
I want to try baking in another program like Substance Painter or Xnormal.
Problem is that I am not sure what workflow to apply and how to export the models. I've done this before in Substance Painter but not with so many models.
In the meantime, I have started the exercise project and all was going well until I got to normals. No artifacts yet though. Initially it was reasonably fast, then the bakes stopped appearing in the image. It just finished baking and showed nothing. I started again and got super slow again...which is why I want to switch to another program for baking.
Actually, the artifacts are back, even on the new model. It's really REALLY strange. It starts out fine, gets slower and then chokes altogether. It's almost like the program/computer has had enough and displays an unfinished bake. Could this be related to memory in any way?
I really want to try another program for baking. I can't take this anymore.
Here is the file https://drive.google.com/open?id=17GhMnF22Bhp57RZWn4HDJT1CHQRVrs8p
And here is a screenshot
Can you please forward this to your colleagues? Who knows, they might be able to crack this.
I've done this before in Substance Painter but not with so many models.
Yeah, the one big advantage Blender has over the others is the ease of workflow where there's no tedious importing and exporting. Substance painter would be my second choice as well, and here's a great video that covers the process:
I'll be doing a lot more baking with the project I'm working on now (the environment that goes along with these guns), so I'll definitely be reporting these kinds of bugs this time around.
I'm not 100% sure it was a bug, I think it had something to do with the amount of subsurf modifiers your workflow has. That would kind of explain why the computer chokes and gives up on the bake.
Anyway, I moved on to Substance Painter was it was actually quite easy. I just had to export the _low and _high models separately. The baking was almost instant.
I get the feeling that the courses on this site want to do as much as possible in Blender but I wish the courses on this site also had alternative ways of doing things. I understand that most newbies don't have paid software like Substance Painter and that Blender is amazing for modeling, UVs, sculpting and even baking but AFAIK the industry standard for texturing is Substance Painter. So, I wish there were also videos showing alternative workflows for texturing.
Here is my progress:
The added subsurf would explain some slowness, but even then it should be consistant slowness and not get worse over time. One other thing to note is that the texture skewing happens in every program, so be on the lookout for if you need it in Substance as well (you might not if the faces aren't too large or if the cage is very close).
So, I wish there were also videos showing alternative workflows for texturing.
The very next course in this series, which focuses on texturing, uses Substance Painter. I don't bake normals in it though, since I find it faster to do those in Blender (unless there's a problem like this of course). I've also made a Blender to Substance Painter overview course:
https://cgcookie.com/course/the-blender-substance-texturing-workflow
https://cgcookie.com/course/texturing-weapons-in-blender-and-substance-painter
I'll also use Substance in the environment course I'm working on now, so more on the way!
