Forum: Autodesk Maya
Posted By: EkDor
Post Time: 09 September 2017 at 09:03 AM
Text:
Im hoping to simplify a task in my work flow.Does anyone know if there is a way to bake out a surface that will only render surfaces that are exposed to illumination. I dont mean what is or isnt in shadow or currently illuminated. But rather if a surface is exposed then render as white otherwise the rest in black. Explicitly Im referring to surfaces that are flat against another. For example; a box laying flat on a flat surface plane will have its bottom surface share space with the plane it is sitting on. This shared area will not be exposed to light should it be rendered. But the rest of the boxes sides and the remainder of the plane its sitting one are.Ive tried utilising various lights, occlusions etc. without getting what I need. Occlusion gets close but some areas become so dark. It would also be more useful to me to not have to manually remove the occlusion gradient from the unexposed full occluded areas. Using the shadow from lights would require loads more work since I would have to run it multiple times and move the lights around etc. besides the illumination across the entire scene by lights is inconsistent.I feel like I could get it to work if I could control the occlusion to be 100% black where the surfaces touch (as it does) and then drop to nothing extremely rapidly resulting only in a very thin line as the surfaces get further apart. Ive tried tweaking the few settings you get in the bake set editor.Im not sure where to go from here. Any ideas would be welcome.
Cheers,. Brook
Posted By: EkDor
Post Time: 09 September 2017 at 09:03 AM
Text:
Im hoping to simplify a task in my work flow.Does anyone know if there is a way to bake out a surface that will only render surfaces that are exposed to illumination. I dont mean what is or isnt in shadow or currently illuminated. But rather if a surface is exposed then render as white otherwise the rest in black. Explicitly Im referring to surfaces that are flat against another. For example; a box laying flat on a flat surface plane will have its bottom surface share space with the plane it is sitting on. This shared area will not be exposed to light should it be rendered. But the rest of the boxes sides and the remainder of the plane its sitting one are.Ive tried utilising various lights, occlusions etc. without getting what I need. Occlusion gets close but some areas become so dark. It would also be more useful to me to not have to manually remove the occlusion gradient from the unexposed full occluded areas. Using the shadow from lights would require loads more work since I would have to run it multiple times and move the lights around etc. besides the illumination across the entire scene by lights is inconsistent.I feel like I could get it to work if I could control the occlusion to be 100% black where the surfaces touch (as it does) and then drop to nothing extremely rapidly resulting only in a very thin line as the surfaces get further apart. Ive tried tweaking the few settings you get in the bake set editor.Im not sure where to go from here. Any ideas would be welcome.
Cheers,. Brook