[Substance Painter] Normal map going wrong
polycounter lvl 3
Hey guys! I'm pretty much a new user here on polycount, and my technical side about 3D modelling isnt exactly the best, so please bear with me as I try to explain what it's happening.
I'm learning to sculpt on zbrush for some time already, but I already knew some stuff on box modelling on maya before. I used to have problems understanding and getting normal maps right, and after I started with zbrush it just got worse, as I would try and would always get weird sutff going on my NM's, so I just have put this aside. But as I'm going with my stuff, I feel the need to understand how baking works, because I want to do so much more with my stuff. I already tried xnormals, but I started to learn painter because it seems easier and more interesting as it gives a quick feedback and allow a faster way of fixing things between programs.
Anyways, I got my high poly right on zbrush, exported as a fbx file from there, then got everything on low res and exported the same way, got it into maya to change the prefix, to make the UVs and get it ready to bake on painter. I tried a process similar to one artist that I always watch on youtube, that is taking the mesh, unlocking its normals, setting to face then soften the edges. But here I started having problems when baking:
I'm having a lot of problems in the hair, the eyes, and specially on edges. I saw on some other threads about changing the read distance, something similar to other thing that I already saw another time on xnormals. So I tried changing it, but the difference isnt that great.
So I got back to maya, and changed from soft to hard the edges of the clothes, something that I knew I shoud do, but I wanted to be sure that I tried everything that I could possibly think of.
It helped a bit, but it still didn't fixed. Aside from the hair and the eyes, for the rest of the mesh where it has its wrinkles and everything there isn't problems, but for these other parts... I don't have idea of what could be wrong. I made sure everything is weld, for the vertices on the clothes to not be going in the wrong direction or overlapping, I tried changing the settings on the fbx export from maya, but nothing seems to help. I don't know if it's because it's too low poly or not. I feel that this is problably something pretty stupid, but I thought I should ask before I get myself too stressed and upset to continue with this model.
I'm really sorry for the looong post, I tried to get everything the best explained and the more informations about the problem I could get
I'm learning to sculpt on zbrush for some time already, but I already knew some stuff on box modelling on maya before. I used to have problems understanding and getting normal maps right, and after I started with zbrush it just got worse, as I would try and would always get weird sutff going on my NM's, so I just have put this aside. But as I'm going with my stuff, I feel the need to understand how baking works, because I want to do so much more with my stuff. I already tried xnormals, but I started to learn painter because it seems easier and more interesting as it gives a quick feedback and allow a faster way of fixing things between programs.
Anyways, I got my high poly right on zbrush, exported as a fbx file from there, then got everything on low res and exported the same way, got it into maya to change the prefix, to make the UVs and get it ready to bake on painter. I tried a process similar to one artist that I always watch on youtube, that is taking the mesh, unlocking its normals, setting to face then soften the edges. But here I started having problems when baking:
I'm having a lot of problems in the hair, the eyes, and specially on edges. I saw on some other threads about changing the read distance, something similar to other thing that I already saw another time on xnormals. So I tried changing it, but the difference isnt that great.
So I got back to maya, and changed from soft to hard the edges of the clothes, something that I knew I shoud do, but I wanted to be sure that I tried everything that I could possibly think of.
It helped a bit, but it still didn't fixed. Aside from the hair and the eyes, for the rest of the mesh where it has its wrinkles and everything there isn't problems, but for these other parts... I don't have idea of what could be wrong. I made sure everything is weld, for the vertices on the clothes to not be going in the wrong direction or overlapping, I tried changing the settings on the fbx export from maya, but nothing seems to help. I don't know if it's because it's too low poly or not. I feel that this is problably something pretty stupid, but I thought I should ask before I get myself too stressed and upset to continue with this model.
I'm really sorry for the looong post, I tried to get everything the best explained and the more informations about the problem I could get
Replies
there are a few threads stickied on here that explains how it all works so I'd recommend reading those but anyway....
working on the assumption that you intend the final presentation of this object to be in painter/designer....
ticking average normals in the bake settings means anything you do with soft/hard edges on your low-poly is discarded s you're wasting your time changing them,
anything you do with hard/soft normals is a hack anyway so don't bother unless you have a good reason (LODS ,tricount restriction etc)
if you have averaged all your normals and your bake looks crap then there is something wrong with your mesh - you might need more geometry, it might not be close enough to your highres mesh or it might have bad UVs etc.
hope that helps - I've been in the pub so excuse any spelling mistakes..
edit :
also setting your rear projection to around 0.5 and front to 0.01 seems to work fine in most cases so you're on the right track there.