Transferring Attributes

Select the low-resolution object to which you want to transfer high-resolution object/group's surface attributes.

From the Render toolbar, choose Get Property Ultimapper to apply an Ultimapper property. For a description of all options in the property editor, see Ultimapper Property Editor [Properties Reference].

Ultimapper uses the renderer specified for the current pass. To set the pass renderer, see Setting the Pass Renderer [Rendering].

On the General tab:

From the High Resolution Source options, click the Pick button. A pick-session begins.

Pick the object or group to use as a high-resolution source (use the explorer if necessary), and then right-click to end the pick session.

From the Maps options, set the following file and format options:

• Path specifies the destination path for all of the generated map files.

• Prefix specifies the prefix that is appended to each map's file name. By default, this is the name of the low-resolution destination object.

• Type specifies the file format for all of the generated map files.

Activate the desired maps. All of the possible maps are described in Ultimapper Map Types.

From the Options section, set the Resolution of the maps.

Set the desired Quality level. Higher levels will produce better quality maps but will increase the time it takes to generate them.

If necessary, adjust the Distance to Surface value to specify the virtual camera's distance from the low-resolution object.

By default, this value is set to 1, which allows for a small margin of error when the low-resolution object does not completely encompass the high-resolution source. For most cases, this setting should suffice.

If you like, you can click the Compute button to have Softimage automatically compute an appropriate distance value.

If you are generating a depth map, you may need to adjust the Depth Range value.

Depth maps are calculated based on the distance between the high-resolution and low-resolution objects. Depth Range normalizes the distance values such that they fall within the range that allows the most depth information to be stored in the map.

If you like, you can click the Compute button to have Softimage automatically compute an appropriate depth range value.

On the Advanced tab:

If necessary, from the Setup options, you can change the texture projection used for the UVs and/or the CAV property used for the Tangents by clicking the appropriate pick button to begin a pick session.

Once the pick session begins, locate the desired texture projection or CAV property in an explorer, pick it, and right-click to end the pick session.

Ultimapper uses a tangent map, stored in a color at vertices (CAV) property to generate realtime previews of the low-resolution target object. You can edit the tangent map to reduce any artifacts you may find while previewing the effect.

Click the Adjust Tangents button to open the TangentOp2 property editor.

• Make sure that the State is set to Active.

• Increase the Smoothing value to smooth out the tangent map.

For more information see Editing Tangents and Binormals.

Once you've adjusted the tangent map, you can bake it into the object by clicking the Freeze Tangents button. You are no longer able to adjust the tangent map after the freezing process.

You can also deactivate the Keep Tangent Operator option to automatically bake the tangent map into the object after you generate the other maps. However, the resulting tangent map will be uneditable.

If you activated the ambient occlusion map in step 6, set the ambient occlusion options as described in Adjusting the Ambient Occlusion Options.

Once all of the options are set, click the Regenerate button on any tab to generate the normal and/or surface maps.

Switch to the Preview Shader Tree tab to preview the results of the Ultimapper property. Preview options are discussed in Previewing Ultimapper Results.