Super ugly bake please someone help

Sunray

Hey i'm workinng on a weapon and i got to the point of baking and it looks very bad. I was wondering if someone could please help me i'm using xnormal with a cage. Also it seems to bake weird at some edges 

Scruples

I think your cage may be too close so it's not covering the highpoly, there's no photo's of it overlaying the highpoly so I can't say for sure but that's what it looks like is happening.

Sunray

Scruples said:

I think your cage may be too close so it's not covering the highpoly, there's no photo's of it overlaying the highpoly so I can't say for sure but that's what it looks like is happening.

It did in fact notcover the hp every where i fixed it thanks, But sadly enough that didn't help to fix all the problems i still get some weird things that seem the follow my topology and the holes became really weird any idea how to fix those problems?

heyeye

The holes skewing is a problem with your Low poly, here's a good thread explaining it:
http://polycount.com/discussion/147227/skew-you-buddy-making-sense-of-skewed-normal-map-details

As for the edges not baking correctly, here's a thread discussing hard/soft edges and UV seams:
http://polycount.com/discussion/107196/youre-making-me-hard-making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts

A lot of this can be fixed by just adding more geometry though.

A good trick I use when constructing a low poly from a sculpt is I will duplicate my high poly, decimate the duplicated mesh until it has just enough tris to keep the silhouette(usually this means decimating until it will no longer decimate further).Ends up around 1k tris depending on the complexity of the mesh.

I then import this mesh into Maya/Max and use that as my reference point for building out the low poly, only this time with quads.

A lot of the time you'll find DM will give you a great starting point, and it'll actually be easier to clean up the edge loops on a decimated low poly than box modeling out and around your high poly. It's a matter of picking your poison.

Scruples

Something to do with the symmetry and overlapping islands. Making a version just for baking with uv's on one half deleted or, just deleting half of it (after freezing normals ofc), should fix it. Sorry for the slow response and make sure you have a backup of your original axe.

(if you use Maya it's called Lock normals and in Max it's in the edit normal modifier, 'Make Explicit').

Sunray

@heyeye
Thanks readed both of them very helpfull and the way to make a lp sounds usefull foing to try that next time. I was able to solve all baking problems except for one i still get some weird lines in my bake where my edges are it's just in a few places not everywhere.

@Scruples
Thanks i had in fact some small overlapping islands and baking with only one half helped. 

heyeye

Yea, like I said a lot of the seam issues is having a 90 degree angle when the high poly is more curved. Adding more geo will help smooth out those areas.

Those edges causing you trouble are not correctly soft/hard.

To avoid artifacts, you must split your uvs where you use hard edges. General rule of thumb is you go and make all UV borders hard edges, and soften all edges inside those borders. It changes based on geometry, but generally you can solve a lot of your bake problems by just having correct hard/soft edges.

Sunray

heyeye said:

Yea, like I said a lot of the seam issues is having a 90 degree angle when the high poly is more curved. Adding more geo will help smooth out those areas.

Those edges causing you trouble are not correctly soft/hard.

To avoid artifacts, you must split your uvs where you use hard edges. General rule of thumb is you go and make all UV borders hard edges, and soften all edges inside those borders. It changes based on geometry, but generally you can solve a lot of your bake problems by just having correct hard/soft edges.


Thanks for telling me since this weapon is only going to be viewed from a pretty far distance i'm just going to leave it like i have now bc it reads well from a distance. But i will make sure to add more geo for future models that are being vieved from a closer distance.

heyeye

Yea just remember, normal maps can't fake silhouettes of your model, they are best when used for looking straight at the objects detail. Always make sure to have all of your fidelity on the silhouette of the model, and let the normal map handle all the inside bits.