Ultimapper Property Editor

 
 
 

| General | Advanced

Given a low resolution object and a high resolution source object/group (two versions of the same character, for example), the Ultimapper tool bakes the normals, surface color, and other attributes of the high resolution source object/group into maps that can be applied to the low-resolution destination object.

The high resolution source can either be a single object or a group of objects, while the low-resolution destination must be a single object. Note, however, that you can apply the Ultimapper property to as many low-resolution objects as you wish.

When you apply this property to a low-resolution object for the first time, a number of things are automatically done:

For a complete procedure, see Transferring Surface Attributes (Ultimapper) [Texturing].

To apply: Select a low-resolution object and choose Get Property Ultimapper from any toolbar.

To redisplay: In an explorer, expand the low-resolution object and click the Ultimapper icon.

General

Generate

Generates the maps for the low-resolution object.

High resolution source

Source

Displays the name of the object or group that you pick to be the high-resolution source. This parameter is not directly editable.

Pick

Begins a pick session. Once you've picked an object or group to use as the high-resolution source, right-click to end the pick session and set the selection as the high-resolution source.

Maps

Path

Specifies the output path for all of the maps activated on this tab. Type the path in the text box or click the More button (...) to browse for the path.

Prefix

Specifies the prefix, if any, that is added to the file name of each generated map.

Type

Specifies the file format for all of the generated maps. Available file formats are:

  • PNG

  • Targa

  • Windows Bitmap

  • SOFTIMAGE: Picture (.pic) file

  • JPEG

  • TIFF 8 bits

  • TIFF 16 bits

  • TIFF Float

  • OpenEXR half-float

  • OpenEXR float

  • mental ray Color 8 bits

  • mental ray Color 16 bits

  • mental ray Color float

  • DDS 8 bits (Uncompressed): A8R8G8B8 Unsigned, 32 bits per pixel

  • DDS half-float (Uncompressed): A16B16G16R16F, 64 bits per pixel

  • DDS float (Uncompressed): A32B32G32R32F, 128 bits per pixel

Available Maps

All of the available maps are listed. Each map has a check box that you can use to toggle whether the map is generated, and a text box where you can enter the map's file name.

Activate any combination of the following maps:

Normal in Tangent Space/Normal in Model Space: Normal maps are a color representation of the object's surface normals' directions. Each color component represents an axis. The Ultimapper tool uses the normal map, in conjunction with a tangent map stored in a Color at Vertices property, to simulate high levels of surface detail on the low-resolution destination object.

You can generate a normal map computed in tangent space, object space, or both.

Bent Normal in Tangent Space: This is the average direction of the unoccluded sample rays cast when calculating ambient occlusion. They are stored in tangent space.

Albedo: An albedo map is simply an image representing the object's surface color without considering illumination.

Depth: Depth maps, also called height maps, are grayscale representations of the height of every point on an object's surface. The Ultimapper tool uses height maps to create a more realistic bump-mapping effect called parallax mapping, which simulates the correct displacement you perceive on an object's surface based on the camera's point of view.

Ambient Occlusion: Ambient occlusion maps use the Ambient Occlusion shader to create a color representation of the extent to which the object is occluded by other objects, or the environment, at any given point. The more the object is occluded, the greater the effect on its ambient illumination component.

When you're setting the Ultimapper properties, you can use the options on the Advanced tab to adjust a subset of the ambient occlusion shader's parameters, which control the final output map.

Material Tags: A material tags map is a simple color representation of where different materials are applied to the high-resolution source object used by the Ultimapper tool. This type of map is not used directly for texturing, but can be quite useful when editing texture maps. For example, in a 2D image-editing program, you could use it in a layer as a selection guide. This allows you to select a single material's coverage area and then edit that area in a different layer.

Options

Resolution

Specifies the resolution of all generated maps. Choose a resolution from the list.

Quality

Specifies the desired quality of the output maps. Higher quality settings mean slower computation but better quality.

Spilling

Specifies how deeply the filled texels bleed into adjacent empty texels in the output image, in texels. A value of 0 results in no bleeding.

Distance to Surface

Specifies how far away the sampling occurs from the surface of the low resolution model.

Values that are too low will cause details on the high resolution source to be lost. Values that are too high may result in distortion.

Depth Range

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.

Compute

Automatically computes appropriate Distance to Surface and Depth Range values.

Advanced

Generate

Generates the maps for the low-resolution object.

Setup

Uvs/Tangents

The low-resolution object's texture projection (UVs) and CAV property (for storing Tangents) are set automatically.

In cases where the object has multiple UV sets or CAV properties, you can click the appropriate Pick button to begin a pick session, choose a different UV set or CAV property, and right-click to end the pick session and update the tool.

You should have an explorer open before starting the pick session, since you'll need to expand the object's hierarchy to access its texture projections and CAV properties.

Keep Tangent Operator

Controls whether the tangent map (stored in the CAV property) is kept after you generate the other maps. Deactivating this option makes the tangent map uneditable.

Freeze Tangents

Bakes the tangent map into the object. Note that the resulting tangent map is not editable.

Adjust Tangents

Allows you to adjust the tangent map. See Tangent Operator (TangentOp2) Property Editor.

Ambient Occlusion Options

Number of Samples

Specifies the number of sample rays used to determine occlusion. Higher settings produce a smoother result but take longer to render.

If set to 0 or a negative value then mental ray will use the global Ambient Occlusion > Rays setting in the mental ray Render Options Property Editor.

Bright Color

This color is used to scale the ambient lighting/reflection when the sampled point is completely unoccluded. If the point is partially occluded, this color is mixed with the Dark Color.

Typically, this color is set to white, but you can choose any color using the sliders. You can also drive the color using a texture.

Dark Color

This color is used to scale the ambient lighting/reflection when the sampled point is completely occluded. If the point is partially occluded, this color is mixed with the Bright Color.

Typically, this color is set to black, but you can choose any color using the sliders. You can also drive the color using a texture.

Spread

Defines the angle of the cone from which sample rays are fired. A value of 0 samples only in the direction of the surface normal, while a value of 1.0 samples the entire hemisphere above the sampled point.

Maximum Distance

Specifies the maximum range for sample rays fired from a given point.

  • When Maximum Distance set to 0 the entire scene is sampled, meaning that rays are traced until they reach the scene boundary.

  • When Maximum Distance is set to a non-zero value, sample rays are traced only for the specified distance. Objects outside of this range do not occlude the sampled object at all. Objects within this distance occlude more the closer they are to the object.

It's usually preferable to limit the maximum distance by using non-zero values. Distant objects generally affect the final result less because they occupy a proportionally much smaller area of the sampling hemisphere than closer objects of the same size. The slight reduction in overall occlusion that this may cause is offset by the accompanying reduction in render time.

Reflective

When activated, the shader performs reflection occlusion rather than ambient occlusion. This changes the sampling pattern from a cone around the surface normal to a more distributed pattern around the direction of reflection.

Using reflection occlusion can help enhance the realism of reflection maps by incorporating color and detail from the surrounding environment map.

Output Mode

The shader had five different modes that control the output color:

  • Occlusion Using Shading Normal: produces a standard ambient occlusion effect, where the Bright and Dark colors are used to scale the ambient lighting/reflection in accordance with the amount of occlusion.

    In this mode, sampling is performed in the direction of the shading normal.

  • Occlusion Using Bent Normals: produces a standard ambient occlusion effect, where the Bright and Dark colors are used to scale the ambient lighting/reflection in accordance with the amount of occlusion.

    In this mode, the sampling direction is biased to return more of the Bright color in the blended result.

  • Sampled Environment: is similar to regular occlusion, but also performs environment sampling. As such, when the scene uses an environment map, the map color is multiplied with the Bright color to produce the final unoccluded color value.

  • Return Bent Normals (World Space): returns a color value based on the average of the unoccluded sample rays in world space. The Red, Green, and Blue components correspond to the X, Y, and Z axes respectively.

  • Return Bent Normals (Object Space): returns a color value based on the average of the unoccluded sample rays in object space. The Red, Green, and Blue components correspond to the X, Y, and Z axes respectively.

Occlusion in Alpha

When activated, the scalar occlusion value is stored in the alpha channel, irrespective of the specified Output Mode.

Normally, the color returned for a given point is a blend between the Bright color and the Dark color, including the alpha channel, depending on how that point on the surface is occluded.

When this parameter is on, the blending between the bright and dark color is not done for the alpha channel. Instead, the alpha channel stores the actual amount of occlusion.

If you need the alpha channel to be 1, independently of the occlusion, simply set the Bright color and Dark color alpha values to 1, and the blend will always return 1.

Preview Shader Tree

Generate

Generates the maps for the low-resolution object.

Hide/Unhide

Low res target

Hides/unhides the low-resolution model, which is useful for visualizing.

High res source

Hides/unhides the high-resolution source, which is useful for visualizing.

Generate Preview

The Preview options allow you to preview the generated normal and surface maps results in real time using DirectX of OpenGL, or offline using the mental ray renderer.

Display

Specifies the renderer for which to create a preview.

Create Preview

Creates and displays the maps specified on the General tab. The maps are displayed via a render tree that uses all of the active maps. The render tree uses shaders appropriate for the renderer selected in Display.

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