Generate

Generates the maps for the low-resolution object.

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.

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 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.

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 XSI 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.

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.

Generate

Generates the maps for the low-resolution object.

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 GPUSurfaceFX2 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.

Samples

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

Bright

A color used to scale the ambient lighting where the object is completely unoccluded. If the object is partially occluded, this color is mixed with the Dark color.

Dark

A color used to scale the ambient lighting where the object is completely occluded. If the object is partially occluded, this color is mixed with the Bright color.

Spread

Defines the size 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.

Generate

Generates the maps for the low-resolution object.

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.

Display

Specifies whether you wish to preview the maps using DirectX or OpenGL realtime shaders, or mental ray shaders.

Hardware

Specifies your graphics card. If you do not find your card in this list, set this option to the closest approximation.

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 to the Display setting (i.e. OpenGL shaders for an OpenGL preview, mental ray shaders for a mental ray preview, and so on).

More Presets

Opens a Net View containing additional realtime shader presets.