XSI Ultimapper.

[Epifire]

So I have been trying endlessly to get the hang of the Ultimapper tool, but I am always ending up with most of the resulting Normal, Depth etc looking a lot like this...



This being the model I am getting high resolution off of for the reference...



Trying to figure out how to use this thing the way I am supposed to I guess. Just looking for advice right now.

[R_Yell]

Hmm, distance to surface too small? I have used this tool a few times and as far I remember, that property could cause such issue. Also check the position for low and high poly models, and they have been frozen previously. Taking some wild guess here...

[Epifire]

Hmm, distance to surface too small? I have used this tool a few times and as far I remember, that property could cause such issue. Wrong uv's also may have to do.

Ah so I have to have my UVs setup too? I have been trying to do this on a blank model so I could start on getting my UVs next. I'll go check distance to surface properties real quick and see if that changes anything.

EDIT: The distance properties did help make the image more clear and brought out the depth, but the whole thing is still has all the bunched up tiny polys.

[stoopdapoop]

Yes, you have to unwrap your lower poly model. Not the high poly though.

[Epifire]

Yes, you have to unwrap your lower poly model. Not the high poly though.

I managed that right, since the reference boxes indicate which models to use as high poly and what not. Now I think my problem has come up since I am trying to find a way of tossing all the polys into a non-mangled texture. I have no texture support setup on this yet so I think that is the issue. I can't really get results yet either so I am thinking I need to map out unique objects individually, and then throw all of them together in a rendermap texture when done with the singled out ones.

Tell me if I am wrong in going about this, I am just trying to find the best manner of texturing.

[Stormy]

When you bake textures you're baking the extra detail of the high poly onto the lower poly models uv map, so you need good uvs. When you are baking you can't have any overlapping faces or you'll get artifacts all over the shit. I don't know what caused that first normal image, it looks nothing like anything like I have seen. As long as you have well unwrapped uvs with no overlaps, all your face normals on your high AND low poly meshes are facing the right way, and your models are aligned in 3d space, any errors you have should be settings errors.

[Epifire]

When you bake textures you're baking the extra detail of the high poly onto the lower poly models uv map, so you need good uvs. When you are baking you can't have any overlapping faces or you'll get artifacts all over the shit. I don't know what caused that first normal image, it looks nothing like anything like I have seen. As long as you have well unwrapped uvs with no overlaps, all your face normals on your high AND low poly meshes are facing the right way, and your models are aligned in 3d space, any errors you have should be settings errors.

Currently I think it is a setting in XSI I just cannot find out what it is. I know your not a XSI user stormy, but I am still trying some of the techniques you had shown a while back for "seamless UVs". That is of course if I can get this thing to generate maps correctly, I might be able to start getting some good looking models going.

EDIT: Okay so I just figured out the results I was searching for was under the Rendermap tool, so I was trying to use the wrong one. I got some great occlusion textures out of this thing now, so I guess I can get whole surface properties for texturing through that. However I am going to come back to this problem when I want a Normal map. Good news is I can start making textures now.