Ultimapper issues and questions

[Alex M. Lehmann]

Hi all,

I'm currently working with the Ultimapper to get some normal maps from a high poly object to a low poly one. I experience some undesired results and wonder whether any of you has more experience with it and how to solve these issues:

1.) I have a rigged and animated model (low poly one) and a hires model. They are aligned on frame 1. Now I use ultimapper to create the maps, which works (more or less) fine. The display is being changed to "show vertex color" automatically, as soon as I apply the ultimapper property. Now, after having done all the mapping, the frame rate drops about 95% in shaded mode, even when I switch the model shading back to "object color". In wireframe mode I still have my 30fps but not in shaded. Any idea what I have to switch off to make it work in shaded mode again? Even when I freeze the model stack, or the projection map, nothing changes. Ultimapper must change more than just the vertex color display node and I can't figure out what else changed.

2.) I have some undesired effects in the creases/folds of the hires model. Even though the mesh is really high poly and modeled fine, and even when I crank up the quality to highest and 1k, I get a result like the one in the attached jpeg.

3.) The calculation takes forever... unless it is 256x256 and lowest quality. Any tipps on how to improve rendertime?

Thanks a bunch... I think I will make it work with a lot of trial and error, but it would be nicer to cut some corners if you have some experience about ultimapper =)

Lx

[HunterST]

hmm
1) under vertex colour is this set to never show(use material) Display Options, and under the tab peformance check backface culling, also you can set how much memory to use in playback etc.
2+3)I have had probs with areas that join like between the fingers, legs etc. basically what happens is that the area on the right leg gets mapped on to left and vice versa, this is due to distance from surface, try manually changing this (sometimes I get numbers in the range of the twenties, now I assume this is 20 softimage units, and physically it is less than one).
Don't use the highest setting until you are satisfied with the lower end ones. I do many of my previews at a res of 512*512 and low or lowest setting.
Also I find some artifacts can't be changed and thus change them in a 2d editing program.

Sorry I wish I could go into more, but I have ran out of time

[lloyd]

well good luck with that. i cant seem to get ultimapper to produce any type of amboc map for a in game texture i am making. and as Avid / softimage don't like to make tutorials i guess i'll never know how to get a nice smooth amboc texture to map to my character!

[ThE_JacO]

To produce an ambocc map you're better off rendermapping the high res mesh' ambocc to your low res mesh' UV space.

Ultimapper is meant to bake into raster (images) geometry deltas of various flavours, baking shading to raster is a rendermapping job.