[Addon] GYAZ Handplane Baker Bridge

Last Update: December 16, 2022 for Blender 3.4

Baking high poly to low poly geometry in Blender produces inferior results because it has no antialiasing whatsoever. This can be helped to some extent by baking to higher than final resolution but it makes bake times go very high. The solution is to use Handplane Baker which can do 16x supersampling on large textures very fast and is just so much faster than Blender in general. It can organize objects into projection groups and bake all the maps you need at once. This addon makes the process convenient, letting you configure everything from inside Blender and export with a single click.

GYAZ Handplane Bridge:

Blebder 2.80:

Handplane:
http://www.handplane3d.com/

Get Handplane on Gumroad for free:

Setup:

  1. Download&Install Handplane
  2. Install GYAZ Handplane Bridge Addon for Blender
  3. Set up handplane.exe path in Addon Preference in Blender

Addon Location:
Properties Window > Render > Handplane Bridge

Usage:

  1. Set up projection groups
  2. Choose maps to bake
  3. Choose destination

way 1:

  1. Hit ‘BAKE WITH HANDPLANE’
  2. Once it’s done, the file explorer should popup at export folder/textures

way 2:

  1. Hit ‘GO TO HANDPLANE’
  2. Now Handplane should automatically start and the file explorer should popup, too
  3. Drag the .HPB file (which should be selected in your file browser) into Handplane
  4. In Handplane go to Output menu and hit BAKE
  5. Once it’s done, your textures should be in the export folder/textures

Using Tangent Space Normalmaps baked by Handplane in Blender:
To get a normalmap that Blender can use, choose the Unity 5.3 Preset. If you choose Unreal Engine 4 Preset, you can still use the normalmap in Blender by flipping the green channel of the texture in your material.

Flipping the Green Channel (Unreal 4 Preset):


Handplane Object Space Normalmap To Blender Object Space Normalmap:


Decoding Material ID map:



I set the addon up so I can easily bake a 4-way material id map by changing a single property (‘Material ID’ under the high poly object). The picture shows how to decode it. If you need more material ids, set up the material presets in Handplane manually or just bake vertex colors. Though in that case, you need to find a different more precise way to decode the id map.

Extras:

  • Save presets for different scenarios
  • Checking for common errors:
    – if lowpoly objects have a uvmap
    – if lowpoly and cage objects are triangulated
    – if ‘Suppress Triangulation Warning’ is True: if lowpoly and cage objects have ngons
5 Likes

Supper Cool ! Thanks for your sharing!

Thanks, it works very fast.

UPDATE #2

  • bug fixing

Big thanks for your hard Work

Is it possible to bake AO not only from HiPoly but also from LowPoly himself ?

If the lowPoly have normal map , it possible to bake from both LowPoly and NormalMap !

I still not very clear about “Texture Space AO” ? What is the different from “Ambient Occlusion” ?

It bakes down geometry, it does not bake lighting in general.

No way. I used that technique back when I used Blender Internal (R.I.P.), but it’s only useful as long as you have a highpoly object with a relatively low vertex count, after that it would be just too sluggish and impossible to texture, so I do not mind not having that feature. It’s just best to texture the lowpoly object, of course, there could be exceptions.

As far as I know, it’s just a faster method to calculate AO which may or may not work for the current model. I don’t want to waste time trying and trying to find the best settings for the specific models so I just use AO or Cavity.

Big thanks your answers!

Cheer!

Version #5:

Now the baking process can be started from Blender, just hit “BAKE WITH HANDPLANE” and the addon does the whole baking process to the end.

This is good because previously one had to wait until the exporting was done, which could take a whole minute or more with very high poly meshes, then the baking had to be initiated manually.

Now Handplane Baker is fully integrated into Blender.

@helluvamesh I’m excited to start using this addon but ran into a problem. I’ve got my projection group setup and checked my settings but the export button doesn’t show up. I’m using Blender 2.79 and the latest and Handplane and Bridge. The only thing I can think of is that the Handplane Baker Bridge isn’t finding the executeable… Any ideas?

  1. Post a screenshot of the export section. It’s supposed to look like this:
    k%C3%A9p

  2. What’s you OS?

  3. Open the console and look for error messages (Header > Window > Toggle System Console)

  4. Have you set the path to your Handplane install folder in User Preferences > Add-Onns > Handplane Bridge > Handplane Baker Path?
    Default path on Windows: C:\Program Files\Handplane3D LLC\Handplane Baker\

I’m on Windows 10.

My path is set and it is the default.

I checked the console and I see that the following errors appear when I click on the export tab:

search for unknown operator 'OBJECT_OT_gyaz_export_open_folder_in_explorer', 'object.gyaz_export_open_folder_in_explorer'
rna_uiItemO: operator missing srna 'object.gyaz_export_open_folder_in_explorer'

C:\Users\mc3dk.DESKTOP-5QRTJL1\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\scripts\addons\GYAZ-Handplane-Bridge-master\handplane_bridge.py:1711
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\mc3dk.DESKTOP-5QRTJL1\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\scripts\addons\GYAZ-Handplane-Bridge-master\handplane_bridge.py", line 1711, in draw
    row.operator (Op_GYAZ_Export_OpenFolderInWindowsFileExplorer.bl_idname, text='', icon='VIEWZOOM').path=path
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'path'

Looks like I’m using an operator from one of my other addons in this addon, too. It’s just an oversight that can be corrected fast.

Excellent. I very surprised that this addon isn’t getting more use and that this issue hasn’t come up before.

Looking forward to your update.

Corrected.

1 Like

I can confirm the fix! Thanks so much.

1 Like

A “bug” and a request.

Bug: The script quits when there are 2 uvmaps on a cage object. This doesn’t seem like expected functionality and was quite difficult to track down. If this is intended there could/should be an error mesage.

Request: It would be a nice to have UI improvement if the groups could be collapsed.

Thanks.

I had one more thing that I wanted to ask you, although it most likely has more to do with Handplane than your script. I am getting faceted output from the baker and I can’t figure out how to fix it.

I’ve tried everything I can think of and I can’t seem to solve this. I was hoping you may have some insights into this problem. Thanks.

Thanks for reporting the bug, it’s fixed now. Also added support for collapsing active projection groups.

As for the faceting, I take it it’s a heightmap, that’s just the way how it is, if you bake a displacement map in Blender, you get faceted results too becase it’s calculated per vertex. You need to blur the texture in an image editor. A lot of the times baking an ao or cavity map produce a result that can be used as a heightmap and those textures are not faceted.

Hi helluvanesh
I always use you addon in my dailywork!
GYAZ Handplane Bake Bridge is very usefull , but i can not find your other addons "GYAZ-Export-Tools,GYAZ-Texturer "in your github sometime ago !
where i can get these addons ?Maybe i miss something!
I am lookingforward a update of these addons for blender 2.8
Big thanks your hardwork!

  1. Export Tools:
    At some point I broke that addon so I took it down until I would fix it and forgot about it. Now, I uploaded it again. GYAZ Export Tools (Seamless Blender To Unreal 4 (FBX))

  2. Texturer:
    Now, that’s a different story. Several of my addons override the default menu system and shortcuts to shape the workflow as I see fit. I took those addons down because they devert Blender too much from the default and editing shortcuts is messy, I don’t want to mess up anybody’s keymap.

  3. 2.80:
    I will update my addons to 2.80 as soon as it reaches a stable release and a fully updated python API.

1 Like