Solution: render at a higher resolution (2048 or 4096) and downsize the image as needed in Photoshop. So, in conclusion, it seems that Render To Texture will only sample Normal Maps at 1 sample per pixel when rendering with Mental Ray leaving you with poorly anti-aliased images. Not only does rendering with 256 samples as a MINIMUM not improve the anti-aliasing, it also takes 7 minutes now. Normal Map with Classic/Raytraced sampling and minimum set to 256 samples In fact, you can set the minimum to something outrageous like 256 and the quality will not improve: Normal Map with Classic/Raytraced sampling and minimum set to 64 samples Yippie! Problem solved right? Test our theory by rendering with a minimum of 64 samples per pixel, pretty high quality that should yield nice anti-aliasing: Now if we change the Minimum, the RTT "Samples per Pixel" option updates. So what if we change to the old "Classic/Raytraced" sampling method. In fact, with Unified Sampling, it will always say 1 and will never render to a higher sampling, leaving your Normal Maps with this poor aliasing. The quality of the anti-aliasing seems no different and in fact if we look at the "Projection Mapping" "Options" we see that the "Samples per Pixel" still says "1". Normal Map with UnifiedSampling Minimum set to 16 Ok, so let's set the minimum up to 16 and see what we get. Indeed, it looks like RTT is only using the "minimum" sampling setting to render Normal Maps. So to test that, lets set both Max and Min to 1 and see what we get:Ĭomplete Map rendered with Unified Sampling set to Minimum=1 and Maximum=1 At the Unified default of minimum = 1 and maximum = 128 it appears that RTT is only using the minimum for the Normal Map portion of the render and NOT taking advantage of the adaptive sampling up to 128 that we see in the complete map. Notice the sampling "setup" which just takes you to the render dialog's sampling group for Mental Ray. Note: Click the images to see the full resolution details Setting up all our settings correctly and doing a render from RTT at 512 x 512 we get a reasonable looking complete map, but the Normal Map seems very pixelated: now let's look at some of the renders RTT produced and some of the settings that are confusing.Īssuming we leave Mental Ray at some generic settings, we have Final Gather enabled, some generic lights and we're using Unified Sampling for anti-aliasing. I've setup the low detail model and Projection Modifier. However, I have only found a few dealing with the anti-aliasing issue and none addressing the specific issues with Mental Ray (that doesn't mean there isn't something out there of course).įor my examples below I'm using a hubcap model. BTW there are tons of great tutorials and forum posts related to these tasks online. So next you would align your 2 models, create the Projection Modifier (either by adding it in RTT or manually) and refine the projection cage to your liking. Projection mapping is required and RTT is set up to deal with this. You probably want to create a normal map to add detail from the high poly version onto the lower poly version. I do not profess to be an expert in any of these areas, just another experienced user, frustrated by some unexpected behavior in Max.ġst you likely have a high detail model and you plan to use RTT to render out some good maps to use on a lower detail model. I'll assume at this point you are familiar with RTT and have at least dabbled in it to produce various image outputs for use, most likely, in some sort of real-time or gaming environment. If there's a solution I'm not aware of using Mental Ray, please let me know what I'm missing. Below are some samples and a description of the problems and my recommended solution at the bottom. If you've used Render to Texture (RTT) with Mental Ray as your renderer, you may have been frustrated by the poor anti-aliasing quality of Normal Maps produced through RTT.
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