Baking ambient occlusion tool

#1 Now that's impressive stuff! And at $15, is far cheaper than CrazyBump. Plus, according to the narration in this video, it gives your model emotion, the one thing my heartless, stoic models always lacked.

Having to convert to OBJ to use it is a minor speed bump in an art pipeline. No big deal. Renders fast. Nice tool. No real-time preview... you have to do a render each time, but with renders that fast and such nice viewing utilities, this thing is awesome.

#2 Thanks! It's great to hear that somebody likes all my hard work.

What model format do you use most frequently? I plan on adding support for more in the future and I'm trying to get a sense of what people use the most. Obj can be a bit limiting, as it doesn't support a lot of the advanced stuff.

#3 Unless you have a nuclear computer..the app has brilliant speed.
- add batch processing, I'll buy.

#4

Quote:What model format do you use most frequently? I plan on adding support for more in the future and I'm trying to get a sense of what people use the most. Obj can be a bit limiting, as it doesn't support a lot of the advanced stuff.

Well, I shouldn't sound so critical... OBJ is fairly standard for moving meshes between apps. For instance, artists are used to using OBJ to move meshes from modeling apps to Zbrush and back. OBJ one of the few mesh formats that CrazyBump allows. Maybe the efficient (read: lazy) artist in me would like to see .MAX supported, but of course that would only appeal to Max users, and may not be worth your time. .DAE seems to be gaining a lot of ground lately as a cross-app file format, and isn't as limiting as OBJ, as you mentioned. So if you had to add one, .DAE would probably be it. Torque now uses .DAE as a supported mesh format in the engine. But with all that said, I'm buying this app either way.

#5 Russell, if he'll give us command line support,(smak -c:file.obj -settings here)
- I'll write a small utility to have max export the obj file into smak and use settings of a max panel to push settings to the command line, let smak do it's thing and then grab the AO map and apply.

I think I fudged that explanation but I'm sure you guys get the idea. Effectively acting as an external plugin.

#6 Nice! Is that Mac version a certainty? $15 is cheap, but now I have to actually boot up the Win7 beast again to get the product code ;)

Let me also add a vote for Collada support in a future update.

#7 I'm already halfway through Collada support and the way I wrote the tool command-line support should be simple. Those are good candidates for features the next version. I've got .max on my list too but it probably won't happen as soon. Thanks for the input.

As for a Mac port, I would love to make one but I don't own a Mac. I have access to one, so if I got enough demand for a port I could definitely develop one, but Mac versions wouldn't be as frequent unless the thing makes me enough money to justify purchasing a Mac. (Which I would already have if it weren't for those damn PC games!) In short, if a couple other people ask me for it too, I'll do it.

Also, I love these forums, except that they have no preview button!

#8 The EB idea for including it in Max (in doit I suppose...) is awesome :-)

#9 I don't do a lot of modeling and skinning yet, but I from the comments I'm seeing here I can tell your product is something people want and need.

I just purchased a copy. I hope one day I'll find it very useful, in the meantime, I hope the funds (all-be-it from only one copy purchase isn't much) help you to continue your development.

Collada is nice since T3D supports Collada as well, but as you said Collada can be a bit limiting. How hard would it be to handle Torque Formats like DTS? Just a thought. I'd be happy with Collada personally.

Congrads and Good Luck!

#10 Awesome! I actually just finished a new version with Collada support, it's up now. Also has batch processing, a scene tree that lets you deal with multiple materials better, and an expanded and much faster raytracer with lots of new options. These features come from feedback and input that people gave me so hopefully they will make SMAK more useful.

#11 does it automatcally embed the AO map into the diffuse texture map. or do you have to photoshop the two together.

#12 It displays the two together on the model in the preview so you can see what your model looks like with its diffuse and its material properties, but currently you have to then go and combine the two in photoshop and gimp to get the final texture. That's a feature I've been thinking of adding for a while though, saving out both textures into one file automatically.

#13 Sweet! Just picked up a copy. I think this will be the perfect compromise for the low frame rate in T3D using the stock SSAO. I get that awesome AO effect and keep to keep a good FPS! Not to mention those with lower end computer get to have pretty graphics too. Dude 2 thumbs up!