2.83 Bake Displacement & Normals High Poly -> Low Poly

algovincian

I'm currently running Blender 2.83, and am looking for a way to bake both displacement & normals from an existing high poly object to an existing low poly object. I was able to do so in previous versions of Blender, but it seems to now require a multi-resolution object (as opposed to 2 separate existing objs).

If anyone could shed some light on how I'm being an idiot, it would be much appreciated! 

- Greg

 

Krys Kryngle

It's not very straightforward, but I figured it out from this video and probably some addtional searches.  Another tutorial said to bake to .exr files to avoid lost details.  Try it and let us know if you get stuck.  Delete the eyes, teeth, and fingernails, you don't need them.  Use Diffeomorphic's combine like materials, then make sure you have the image texture node in each material to bake (like I said, not very straighforward).

 

algovincian

Thanks for the link and taking the time to respond. Unfortunately, this method still requires a multires object, and thus shrinkwrapping to produce the high poly rather than using an existing high poly. This is exactly what I was trying to avoid.

Did some more digging:

https://devtalk.blender.org/t/how-can-we-bake-displacement-on-2-8/7711/8

It seems as though this is not possible in Cycles. Since Blender Internal was removed, I think I'm SOL at the moment. I'll keep looking for a way in 2.83 and if I come up with a solution, I'll be sure to post.

A frustrating step backward, but in the meantime, I'll just use 2.79 or another piece of software all together. Thanks again.

- Greg

Mendoman

Hmmm, can't you just add multiresolution modifier for your high poly mesh, and just use that to bake maps? I think that's how I baked my displacement maps, and it worked quite ok.

algovincian

Mendoman said:

Hmmm, can't you just add multiresolution modifier for your high poly mesh, and just use that to bake maps? I think that's how I baked my displacement maps, and it worked quite ok.

Thanks for taking the time to respond, but I'm not sure I understand what your saying.

I'm not sculpting the high resolution mesh in Blender - it already exists. Like I said, both the low-poly and high-poly meshes aleady exist and are imported.

I've tried adding a multires modifier to the low-poly, sub-dividing within the multires object, and then using the reshape option to try and re-create the existing high-poly within the multires object, but I haven't been able to get it to work.

- Greg