Help of advanced MAX users needed: "Render to Texture"

[oluv]

Please can someone help me?!

 

i am fooling around with the max7 demo (never used max before) to try out all features before it expires.

 

please don't kill me if i am asking stupid questions, but i am trying to get most of this program in this short time to see if i really can get the features i need, to decide if i will make a purchase in future or not.

 

now the most important feature for me is "render to texture" as i am going to create some interactive models with baked radiosity solutions. but i am having some problems with it and i cannot find any tutorial that really goes deep inside texture-baking. i have read the max-manual but many questions remain. maybe someone can give me links to good tutorials regarding this topic?!

 

first of all i don't manage to export the baked model when the baked textures are inside a shell material. i see them in the viewport and all and i can switch between original and baked material, but as soon as i export the model (vrml or other) there are no textures at all. do i miss some setting here?

if i replace the original material with the baked one instead, everything works fine, but i do not have the original material anymore...

 

another problem i have is that in the max viewport the baked texture is displayed in a different way, as it should be in original. only if i render an image everything looks ok.

please see my first attachment!

on the left you see the exported model to vrml with the original textures, in the middle you see the max-viewport with exposure compensation turned on (as it was set for radiosity) and on the right with exposure compensation turned off, but the result still doesn't look as desired.

 

still another problem i have:

is it possible to create a SINGLE diffuse map for objects that have different materials? my intention is to create one single map for the whole scene that contains all lightning and shadows, but the scene is built of different objects. is there some modifier i can apply to merge these objects, so that one single map can be created?

 

and a last one:

is it also possible to bake geometry into textures (as it is possible in lightscape)? please see my second attachment.

i have source geometry that is baked as texture into a destination geometry.

 

there is some new feature in max7 inside render to texture called "projection mapping" but i have no idea how to use this. if someone could help, this would be really really great! i appreciate any answer!

 

many thanks in advance!

 

o.

[oluv]

ok, now i could answer my second question by myself.

 

i have to turn up the self-illumination for the baked lightmaps, otherwise the lights inside the scene still affect their shading.

 

but still i mull over all the other problems...

 

any hints appreciated!

[mbr]

Sometimes, and I have no idea why, you have to turn up the self illumination slot, which you've discovered. Another thing to try is the reflection slot - get rid of ALL reflections, both mapped and raytraced (reflections are position based, so you don't want them in real time unless it's rendered in real time).

 

Not sure why you aren't gettting the maps on export. I am using a program called Eon that includes the maps in the file, so I don't need the path anymore. I'd just make sure that the path is there and that there are image files that correspond to the objects in the scene.

 

You can make one map for everything, but I wouldn't advise it. It'll take up tons of video card memory for a large file (the image would have to be very large to look hi res enough close up). Just convert everything to Edit Poly, attach, and just say 'yes (I think it is, or what ever allows you to procede)' when it asks you if you want to attach objects with different materials and ids, and it should be fine. Now, it wouldn't be easy to go back to the original, as now it's a more complext object, but it'll bake everything to one map and it should look fine (baking, from my experience, is not perfect does weird thigns sometimes).

 

What I do is attach all objects that are the same material. UVW coords and multi objects cause problems, sometimes, too, as does the material ids.

 

I am on 6, though, so there may be some changes on 7.

[oluv]

hey markus

 

thanks a lot for your reply. i will try out your suggestions.

 

best regards, o.