3ds Max 2012 & 2015 Normap Map Viewport Issues

AngryMindtricks

So this is an issue I'm having on my home computer (max 2012) & my work computer (max 2015)... I've actually always thought my normal map baking pipeline was flawed... there were issues that I could never seem to get rid of. No matter how much I refined cages, refined the model, laid out my UVs, changed smoothing groups, etc... my viewport would always show my models with broken hard edges and horrible bakes... I've attemped flipping the green channels and red channels and playing around with viewport settings and such but my normal maps would always come out looking messed up and even when I rendered them in Default Scanline/Mray/Vray etc... Until literally yesterday I decided to try my luck with a model I exported from Max into Maya with UVs etc laid out and a baked normal map from xNormal as a test... Turns out my baking pipeline has always been fine but I've long since done any normal map baking for the line of work I've been doing in the industry recently (arch viz/product etc)... Now I've come back to it I've had a frustrating few days of trying to come to a solution on why my bakes have always been so messed up until it hit me that I hadn't tried viewing my maps in anything else besides max.

There's not much need to show a screenshot because the best example of what my bakes look like is generic... hard edges / channels look flipped / almost no existence of smooth blending between corners what so ever.

I can only assume it's max's viewport, materials or my graphics card that's having an issue viewing my normal maps in viewport and renders.

Any way, if anyone knows how to solve this issue or even has a similar experience and found a solution please let me know Thanks!

huffer

Some screenshots with the problems would be nice, as well as the baked maps - issues will get identified and solved faster. The quick fix for most discrepancies between max baker and max viewport is adding an Edit Normals on top of your mesh (and not changing anything) then collapsing.

monster

It might help if you actually stated your workflow. Or better post a simple model and texture that isn't working for you.

Here's a couple of common issues.

1. If you have gamma enabled, make sure your normal map texture has Gamma Override set to 1. Otherwise Max is gamma correcting it as if it were a color map.
http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-556B3B1C-D62E-48F6-A633-DCF5172219B5-htm.html

2. If you are using a Standard material you need to pass your Normal Map Bitmap through a Normal Bump node set to tangent.

AngryMindtricks

Alright sorry about the delayed reply. Here's the kind of issue I'm having with viewing normals in my 3ds max viewport.

Hopefully I'm not being stupid and expecting decent results when they don't actually exist etc... When I render it looks exactly the same as the viewport as well.