For weird reasons bake settings in blender actually use render samples setting for quality, if you reduce them to lower values (like 4 for normals, 64 for ao) you will dramatically reduce baking time. Also in blender you can tessellate low poly to reduce skew artifacts by adding subd modifier and changing mode from catmull clark to simple.
Thanks, solves a few of the issues I was having with blender texture baker, plus I realize the diversity of baking applications such as bake lighting and color are another huge advantage for Blender outside of the regular PBR asset pipeline.
@@Tosmo I received the notification to your response in my comment above but that itself seems to have disappeared. Tried inspecting to read the rest of your comment from the notification drop down but it doesn't work. I know YT has a filter for publishers to block certain words so maybe check those. It's likely that they natively block certain words as well, who knows. I could comment each suspicious word independently and see if any disappear but that's far to tedious for my liking and would spam your notifications so I'd rather not even try. To be safe, copy your responses before posting or copy it while editing (edit to see if its been deleted) so that you don't have to retype everything. This is not the first time I have encountered this problem while commenting, previously I had to omit certain words or mask them by including numbers or symbols as replacements for certain letters.
@@stefanbachrodt7072 I'm checking through my settings, I and I don't see why it was deleting so many comments. I don't see how it could the word filter, it''s even deleting smaller comments as well.
Hi may i ask u a question? When I create a cage in blender (after I duplicate the low poly and the new mesh becomes the cage object) I simple scale along normals (alt S) but when I bake I receive an error, something like "cage and low poly must have the same number of faces". Using "statistic" I've noticed that scaling along normals changes the number of vertices, edges and faces in some cases. Do u have a solution for this problem? Basically I can't use cage for some objects due to this problem. Thank u in advance ✌✌
From multiple testing and research I did, regarding the SubstancePainter, the best workflow to get perfect bake is to bake twice, there is no other way. One with averaged normals turned on, one with averaged normals off. Now, the map that has averaged normals will be your main map since all edges will be good. The problem with this map is that normal details will be skewed. To fix that skewing, you put the non averaged normal map on top, black mask it and just paint over details that needs fixing. The cool thing is that you can do all of that inside Substance, without need to go back into any other software. But the bad thing is that it's a tedious process and can take quite some time to do depending on complexity of your model. My opinion is that even thou people praise Marmoset for it's baking, I find that SubstancePainter is quite powerfull if done correctly. 🍻
Honestly this was such an amazing video compared to the one I originally watched on baking. You went over a lot of details and even showed me how to fix baking errors. Thank you! ❤
If you use now the X16 samples the errors in normal maps are almost not noticeable, as it comes very smooth ;) for me substance painter is the best solution, no complications enter the software just make sure your HP aligns with your LP and bake and it's usually done, by the way when you are baking real "edges" per se in the LP you should still use some bevels, because if you don't have bevels your normal map is gonna look very fake and seams are gonna be obvious, so when ever you have an edge in your LP you need to bevel it, or subdivide it however you went into your process. For LP you can use bevels with 2 segments and that should be more than enough!
Thank you for making this video. It saves me time spent choosing tools. There are indeed a lot of tools out there that do things that look similar. The one with the best efficiency can only be selected through experimentation to choose the one that suits you best. Thank you for your objective comparison and advice!
One of the best videos I've seen on this topic so far, you literally covered everything I guess. ❤🙌 Edit: will be sharing in few facebook groups as this is the best video on this topic, Cheers!
Yeah, Marmoset Toolbag is really all that; a great set of tools, and they have added more in toolbag 4. I'm still using 3 but will probably give 4 a try soon.
@@Tosmo Yep, awesome stuff. I have done hundreds of animations and try to keep on top of everything coming out but what caught my eye a few weeks ago was some Marmoset stuff that really blew me away (not as much as all the Unreal 5 rendering coming out last week or so haha). Iam trying to find that. I realize the push towards Iclone C4d Blender Max integrating with Unreal render engine but I still want to keep my system resources and hard drive space reasonable. Thats why Marmoset and others like that always interest me :) 👌
I want to ask something about substance painter baking problem for UV seam, could it be seamless in substance painter? it is because everytime I baked, in mesh map the normal seam would be very clear and it output a bad result in blender.
It depends, I don’t think I covered it in this video but blender uses an OpenGL normal and if you have directx normal like a lot SP presets output then you need to flip\invert the Y channel (green) on your normal map or just export an OpenGL normal . That’s one common mistake.
Using xNormal, takes a while to learn it. But once you do, you never go back. Wish they added more functionality for batch baking to have the machine bake 100s of assets, file by file. The xml is highly useful for quickly configuring xNormal for baking.
I found that to solve the duble corner issue in blender, is better to use cage, usually solved the problem, and you can reduce the steng of the normal map node if the problem still going.
cage was and is still the best, and on some intricated shapes the only way to get a perfect bake. Been in the game industry for 30+ years and since normal maps exist, baking with a cage solves all issues.
Does the Marmoset baking work with models that have multiple UDIM's? I've been using substance painter but baking 10's of 4k texture maps is becoming tedious
For some wierd reason when I go to bake my normal map, I cant find the extrusion distance I need to set it to because my highpoly model, after the rounded settings, will end up in a smaller area than my low poly is, and so i end up with a funky looking broken map. Is there any way to fix this?
I only did baking a couple of times with Blender 2.7x and before, I don't use Blender much, so excuse the following question if it sounds stupid. If Marmoset creates the envelope geometry for baking, shouldn't you be using the cage in Blender to make it fair? Maybe that would also create better results. Also, increase the samples to a render quality level. I spent many hours with crappy bakes untill I noticed that samples affect bakes too. xD
The Results with a cage can provide better results in some instances, but I have still had mixed results. However, Marmoset is still much faster, and the tools for manually solving warped details and skew are amazing. Blender baking still works really well. Consider checking out the Bystedt baker addon for Blender, it really helps improves Blender's baking workflow.
Hello everyone can i get some suggestions on something i am really confused about. I am a beginner 3D artist just learned blender and made a couple of models using blender and substance painter and i recently took a course to make a game asset in blender and SP and i have learned that you only need high poly model for baking and faking detail onto a low poly model so it can run in game efficiently but if i want to make something in blender and sp do i always need to make a low poly version and bake normal maps to do texturing in SP?or i can just do it on high poly version directly? Let say if i wanna texture and building interior or exterior.
It all depends on what you are creating. The Blender>SP workflow is mainly designed for working on video game assets. Creating a low poly isn't always necessary if you are just working on creating a sculpture, creating static props for animation, or creating 3d renders or concept art in blender. However, it can still be useful to have low topology and clean topology if you are creating something that needs to be animated, or it's too performance heavy to have at such a high density.
@@Tosmo so you would say that i should always only make the mesh as high that it would make a difference in its appearance and remove extra geometry if its not making it look bad,gotcha
@@Tosmo Also i wanna learn how to properly bake normal maps as i tried to bake in SP but its coming out really bad idk what actually is causing it,i triangulated the LP mesh in blender and went into SP for baking and the front side of the model looks ok but around other details,there are a lot of artifacts
No, the blender setup is mostly for baking inside blender. Just make sure you have your parts seperated, name, unwrapped, and assigned to appropriate material before exporting.
True, didn't catch this but the 32-bit float I generated in Blender seems to function normally in sRGB mode for some reason as the others that were generated in external applications and non-32-bit blender images are all set to non-color.
also, screw Substance Painter. Adobe's subscription-only model made me replace all of their software :) And those alternatives are actually better! ..if you do your homework. For example I use Affinity Designer and Photo instead of Photoshop and Illustrator 👍
WHY ARE MY COMMENTS BEING REMOVED? CHECK YOUR FILTER SETTINGS. I'M NOT USING PROFANITY, I'M NOT USING OFFENSIVE TERMS SURROUNDING ETHNICITY NOR AM I REFERRING TO POLITICAL AGENDA, I'M SIMPLY GIVING HELPFUL TIPS AND ADVICE SURROUNDING THE TOPIC DISCUSSED HEREIN
Hey, I just noticed this, I am seeing the notification for all comments, but now that I check it looks like all comment recieved today have been deleted, including my own replies. I am not sure what is going on, I have not touched anything in YTstudio setting for a long time. Please reply or thumbs up if you even see this reply.
@@Tosmo HOW BIZARRE. Some comments remain while others vanish. Thank you for reposing your comment. I decided to tag you in another thread because I couldn't tag you on your 1st response. Left some tips in that comment that might be worth utilizing from now on.
Left click the icon on the left of the address in the address bar. Firefox : Clear cookies and site data. Chrome : Site Settings > Clear data. TH-cam's cookies have been messy for a while. And when comments begin to "disappear", simply clear TH-cam's cookies and data in your browser.
Friend no offense, but you damn well learn how to work with software in the beginning!Then shoot your videos, you write off your shoals on the program in all aspects, you can come to the same result.The question is only in knowledge and time.Read the documentation on baking through cage and average normals, as well as about padding!
Well thats good to know. I understand that Blender bake results will be improved with subd padding, but I haven't had much luck improving the elapsed time of baking by adjusting the internal render samples, or getting rid of aliasing with an external application. If you know how to accomplish these tasks I would love to see a tutorial, became it something I was unable to find in the documentation. As well as cage meshes (which never gave me any better result)
Damn the intro perfectly explained my situation! Feels like I am being watched...
For weird reasons bake settings in blender actually use render samples setting for quality, if you reduce them to lower values (like 4 for normals, 64 for ao) you will dramatically reduce baking time. Also in blender you can tessellate low poly to reduce skew artifacts by adding subd modifier and changing mode from catmull clark to simple.
Thanks, solves a few of the issues I was having with blender texture baker, plus I realize the diversity of baking applications such as bake lighting and color are another huge advantage for Blender outside of the regular PBR asset pipeline.
That was super useful! Thank you!
@@Tosmo I received the notification to your response in my comment above but that itself seems to have disappeared. Tried inspecting to read the rest of your comment from the notification drop down but it doesn't work. I know YT has a filter for publishers to block certain words so maybe check those. It's likely that they natively block certain words as well, who knows. I could comment each suspicious word independently and see if any disappear but that's far to tedious for my liking and would spam your notifications so I'd rather not even try. To be safe, copy your responses before posting or copy it while editing (edit to see if its been deleted) so that you don't have to retype everything. This is not the first time I have encountered this problem while commenting, previously I had to omit certain words or mask them by including numbers or symbols as replacements for certain letters.
@@stefanbachrodt7072 I'm checking through my settings, I and I don't see why it was deleting so many comments. I don't see how it could the word filter, it''s even deleting smaller comments as well.
Hi may i ask u a question? When I create a cage in blender (after I duplicate the low poly and the new mesh becomes the cage object) I simple scale along normals (alt S) but when I bake I receive an error, something like "cage and low poly must have the same number of faces". Using "statistic" I've noticed that scaling along normals changes the number of vertices, edges and faces in some cases. Do u have a solution for this problem? Basically I can't use cage for some objects due to this problem. Thank u in advance ✌✌
If you uncheck "average normals" in substance painter, you will get less to no skewing on the small details like the bolts and indents.
Ive been using substance since it was first released and I never thought of un-ticking this, thanks
From multiple testing and research I did, regarding the SubstancePainter, the best workflow to get perfect bake is to bake twice, there is no other way.
One with averaged normals turned on, one with averaged normals off.
Now, the map that has averaged normals will be your main map since all edges will be good. The problem with this map is that normal details will be skewed.
To fix that skewing, you put the non averaged normal map on top, black mask it and just paint over details that needs fixing.
The cool thing is that you can do all of that inside Substance, without need to go back into any other software.
But the bad thing is that it's a tedious process and can take quite some time to do depending on complexity of your model.
My opinion is that even thou people praise Marmoset for it's baking, I find that SubstancePainter is quite powerfull if done correctly. 🍻
Honestly this was such an amazing video compared to the one I originally watched on baking. You went over a lot of details and even showed me how to fix baking errors. Thank you! ❤
If you use now the X16 samples the errors in normal maps are almost not noticeable, as it comes very smooth ;) for me substance painter is the best solution, no complications enter the software just make sure your HP aligns with your LP and bake and it's usually done, by the way when you are baking real "edges" per se in the LP you should still use some bevels, because if you don't have bevels your normal map is gonna look very fake and seams are gonna be obvious, so when ever you have an edge in your LP you need to bevel it, or subdivide it however you went into your process. For LP you can use bevels with 2 segments and that should be more than enough!
Thank you for making this video. It saves me time spent choosing tools.
There are indeed a lot of tools out there that do things that look similar.
The one with the best efficiency can only be selected through experimentation to choose the one that suits you best.
Thank you for your objective comparison and advice!
Огромное спасибо! Полезный анализ и такой юморной подход в начале)) 0:30
Great video, makes sense why people use Marmoset given how easy corrections can be made to a map
Thank you very much @Tosmo :)
Hey, your welcome Glad it helped!
One of the best videos I've seen on this topic so far, you literally covered everything I guess. ❤🙌
Edit: will be sharing in few facebook groups as this is the best video on this topic, Cheers!
Hey, Thanks that means a lot, I'm glad it was helpful 😃👍
Awesome information!!! All 3 are very interesting. Marmoset toolbag I have been seeing some amazing stuff lately :) Thanks 👍
Yeah, Marmoset Toolbag is really all that; a great set of tools, and they have added more in toolbag 4. I'm still using 3 but will probably give 4 a try soon.
@@Tosmo Yep, awesome stuff. I have done hundreds of animations and try to keep on top of everything coming out but what caught my eye a few weeks ago was some Marmoset stuff that really blew me away (not as much as all the Unreal 5 rendering coming out last week or so haha). Iam trying to find that. I realize the push towards Iclone C4d Blender Max integrating with Unreal render engine but I still want to keep my system resources and hard drive space reasonable. Thats why Marmoset and others like that always interest me :) 👌
Good Job! Verry usfull info for a game dev 3D modeler.
That's a great tip for measuring extrusion, I was just messing with that value.
Very useful ! Thank you pal
my thanks from Tunisia
Your welcome! 💖😃
"who are you and how did you get in here" I cackled
I second that. I think my neighbour in the next apartment heard me.
Very informative! thanks for making this.
Late but I did not see any comments about using the displace modifier on your cage instead of alt scale.
Yes, I use that in a later video going over retopology
Should have tested it with xNormal, as well.
I want to ask something about substance painter baking problem for UV seam, could it be seamless in substance painter? it is because everytime I baked, in mesh map the normal seam would be very clear and it output a bad result in blender.
It depends, I don’t think I covered it in this video but blender uses an OpenGL normal and if you have directx normal like a lot SP presets output then you need to flip\invert the Y channel (green) on your normal map or just export an OpenGL normal . That’s one common mistake.
Using xNormal, takes a while to learn it. But once you do, you never go back. Wish they added more functionality for batch baking to have the machine bake 100s of assets, file by file. The xml is highly useful for quickly configuring xNormal for baking.
I found that to solve the duble corner issue in blender, is better to use cage, usually solved the problem, and you can reduce the steng of the normal map node if the problem still going.
cage was and is still the best, and on some intricated shapes the only way to get a perfect bake. Been in the game industry for 30+ years and since normal maps exist, baking with a cage solves all issues.
Why do you bake the normal maps first and then the rest of the texture sets afterwards? Why not just bake them at the same time?
ive seen some people add the weighted normal modifier as well. would that have helped with skews etc?
0:00 exactly me lol
Does the Marmoset baking work with models that have multiple UDIM's? I've been using substance painter but baking 10's of 4k texture maps is becoming tedious
Check if toolbag 4 has udims, I believe it does but I’m not entirely sure.
will it do indirect lighting bake, just like blender?
Hi, do i need bevel modifier to model to bake it in Marmoset or Substance?
For some wierd reason when I go to bake my normal map, I cant find the extrusion distance I need to set it to because my highpoly model, after the rounded settings, will end up in a smaller area than my low poly is, and so i end up with a funky looking broken map. Is there any way to fix this?
I only did baking a couple of times with Blender 2.7x and before, I don't use Blender much, so excuse the following question if it sounds stupid.
If Marmoset creates the envelope geometry for baking, shouldn't you be using the cage in Blender to make it fair? Maybe that would also create better results.
Also, increase the samples to a render quality level. I spent many hours with crappy bakes untill I noticed that samples affect bakes too. xD
The Results with a cage can provide better results in some instances, but I have still had mixed results. However, Marmoset is still much faster, and the tools for manually solving warped details and skew are amazing. Blender baking still works really well.
Consider checking out the Bystedt baker addon for Blender, it really helps improves Blender's baking workflow.
What's your opinion on xNormal?
I have used it before and it is still a very good, and very fast option to generate your baked textures.
Ty
Nice
Hello everyone can i get some suggestions on something i am really confused about. I am a beginner 3D artist just learned blender and made a couple of models using blender and substance painter and i recently took a course to make a game asset in blender and SP and i have learned that you only need high poly model for baking and faking detail onto a low poly model so it can run in game efficiently but if i want to make something in blender and sp do i always need to make a low poly version and bake normal maps to do texturing in SP?or i can just do it on high poly version directly? Let say if i wanna texture and building interior or exterior.
It all depends on what you are creating. The Blender>SP workflow is mainly designed for working on video game assets. Creating a low poly isn't always necessary if you are just working on creating a sculpture, creating static props for animation, or creating 3d renders or concept art in blender. However, it can still be useful to have low topology and clean topology if you are creating something that needs to be animated, or it's too performance heavy to have at such a high density.
@@Tosmo so you would say that i should always only make the mesh as high that it would make a difference in its appearance and remove extra geometry if its not making it look bad,gotcha
@@Tosmo Also i wanna learn how to properly bake normal maps as i tried to bake in SP but its coming out really bad idk what actually is causing it,i triangulated the LP mesh in blender and went into SP for baking and the front side of the model looks ok but around other details,there are a lot of artifacts
I love marmoset toolbag 4
blender had some artifacts?
Are you supposed to do the blender setup even if you're baking in substance painter? I'm at a complete loss with this.
No, the blender setup is mostly for baking inside blender. Just make sure you have your parts seperated, name, unwrapped, and assigned to appropriate material before exporting.
@@Tosmo But dont unwrap high poly mesh lol.
How is the winner for you Tosmo :D ??
Marmoset is still by far my favorite :)
@@Tosmo thank you sir appreciate it 😊
you miss xnormal i think
absolutely, Xnormal is OG
Forgot to do "Non-Color" on the normal map ;)
True, didn't catch this but the 32-bit float I generated in Blender seems to function normally in sRGB mode for some reason as the others that were generated in external applications and non-32-bit blender images are all set to non-color.
also, screw Substance Painter. Adobe's subscription-only model made me replace all of their software :) And those alternatives are actually better! ..if you do your homework. For example I use Affinity Designer and Photo instead of Photoshop and Illustrator 👍
Subbed, liked and joined discord :)
WHY ARE MY COMMENTS BEING REMOVED? CHECK YOUR FILTER SETTINGS. I'M NOT USING PROFANITY, I'M NOT USING OFFENSIVE TERMS SURROUNDING ETHNICITY NOR AM I REFERRING TO POLITICAL AGENDA, I'M SIMPLY GIVING HELPFUL TIPS AND ADVICE SURROUNDING THE TOPIC DISCUSSED HEREIN
Hey, I just noticed this, I am seeing the notification for all comments, but now that I check it looks like all comment recieved today have been deleted, including my own replies. I am not sure what is going on, I have not touched anything in YTstudio setting for a long time. Please reply or thumbs up if you even see this reply.
@@Tosmo HOW BIZARRE. Some comments remain while others vanish. Thank you for reposing your comment. I decided to tag you in another thread because I couldn't tag you on your 1st response. Left some tips in that comment that might be worth utilizing from now on.
Left click the icon on the left of the address in the address bar. Firefox : Clear cookies and site data. Chrome : Site Settings > Clear data.
TH-cam's cookies have been messy for a while. And when comments begin to "disappear", simply clear TH-cam's cookies and data in your browser.
Friend no offense, but you damn well learn how to work with software in the beginning!Then shoot your videos, you write off your shoals on the program in all aspects, you can come to the same result.The question is only in knowledge and time.Read the documentation on baking through cage and average normals, as well as about padding!
Well thats good to know. I understand that Blender bake results will be improved with subd padding, but I haven't had much luck improving the elapsed time of baking by adjusting the internal render samples, or getting rid of aliasing with an external application. If you know how to accomplish these tasks I would love to see a tutorial, became it something I was unable to find in the documentation. As well as cage meshes (which never gave me any better result)
baking in blender is freaking conterintuitive, slow and overcomplicated as everything on that piece of software
@@UsernamesHandle blendlet listen up, your software is trash and free software will never achieve anything xD free = bad