Bad shading normal map

kohg

Having problems baking a normal map, on a flat surface with holes in xnormal. It bakes good in 3dsmax vray, but once the mesh is exported to quixel, in the 3do viewer the bad shading in the mesh matches that of the normal map baked in xnormal.

I've been messing with the topology but can't seem to find what exactly is causing this problem.

Fuiosg

looks like a problem with the low poly mesh to me, not enough control loops/cuts?

ZacD

Looks like either a smoothing group issue or normal map sync issue. Messing with the geometry wont do much. There's different ways to fix it. You can either:

1. Add support loops to help control shading
2. Use custom normals to make flat areas have flat shading
3. Use a sync'd normal map workflow. 

kohg

Fuiosg said:

looks like a problem with the low poly mesh to me, not enough control loops/cuts?

I thought that at first, but same happens even with my high poly mesh without turbosmooth.  Been messing the topology for quite some hours now and still getting the same results.

ZacD said:

Looks like either a smoothing group issue or normal map sync issue. Messing with the geometry wont do much. There's different ways to fix it. You can either:

1. Add support loops to help control shading
2. Use custom normals to make flat areas have flat shading
3. Use a sync'd normal map workflow. 

1. Hasn't done much so far.
2. Custom normals?
3. sync'd normal map workflow?

ZacD

5:45 is the most relevant part, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciXTyOOnBZQ

kohg

Thanks for the video. Apparently the problem got fixed with just a simple inset along both plane faces.