Baking Normal Map and Making Ambient Occlusion Pass for Texture (Unwrap?)

[Cb_ArTs]

Hey guys,
I have one minor problem i just don't get over,
When i have a highpoly Model, that i want to normal bake on a low poly,
i set up the UVWs for the Low Poly, the Cage and bake the normal map,
after that i make an AO Pass from the Highpoly, but the problem is, i use
the AO Pass for Texturing, so i need the same UVW Mapping on the Highpoly
as on the Lowpoly, so i can use the AO Pass and the Normal Map on the Lowpoly,
is there any kind of trick for this?

greez Razor

[Pac_187]

Uh what?

You just use xNormal (or Max) to bake an AO map for your low, put it in photoshop on top of all other layers and set it to multiply.

No need to unwrap the highpoly.

Like it's shown in the attachment

[Cb_ArTs]

I mean i make my AO Map from the Highpoly, but i want to use it on the Lowpoly at the end, so i need the same Unwrap as the Lowpoly will use for the Normal Map ?

[Pac_187]

You never unwrap the highpoly.
Only your lowpoly needs a UV-Map.
The highpoly actually is a reference which the renderer reads the details of and puts them onto the texture of the lowpoly.
If you want to bake an AO map from a highpoly model, than the best way is to use xNormal.

You can read more about Ambient Occlusion Map on polycount: http://wiki.polycount.com/AmbientOcclusionMap
There also is a tutorial for xNormal on the bottom of the page.

[Cb_ArTs]

Thank you very much! This really helped me
I got much better results for both normal and ambient occlusion maps! thx