Normals causing seam only when painted?

StickFigs

My workflow is Blender -> Substance Painter -> Unity and I'm getting a weird problem where my normals baked by Substance look normal but when I apply any material I get a weird seam which causes scratches to be oriented differently and causes lighting differences.

Mesh looks right, normals are doing their job:

Applied Aluminum Smart Material and I get the ugly seam:

When I take a look at the normals its apparent that the seam has something to do with the normals:


I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've attached my low, high, and cage meshes in a .zip file. I can upload the Substance .spp file if necessary but I'm just starting a new project with the Unity 5 template and baking the textures so I'm fairly sure it's a problem with my mesh.

MmAaXx

try with the triplanar mapping.

Klawd

The normals are not the problem. The seam is where your UVs are separated. You can't notice it with the grey material because it's just an uniform color.

StickFigs

MmAaXx said:

try with the triplanar mapping.

I tried, it didn't look like it had any affect at all.

Klawd said:

The normals are not the problem. The seam is where your UVs are separated. You can't notice it with the grey material because it's just an uniform color.

So what should I do to fix it? I can't think of a way to unwrap a simple cylinder that wouldn't result in at least one seam?

Jerc

Triplanar should have fixed the seam, it's especially efficient on cylindrical shapes. What does your UV look like?

Klawd

Yes, as @Jerc said triplanar could be a solution but not all the time (be sure to have position and world normals baked because I'm not sure it works without). Another solution for seams would be to "hide" them, like if it's a pipe put the seam on the side of the pipe looking at the wall, and things like that, you gotta get creative. Another solution would be to match the grunge mask on a brush and paint on the seam.

StickFigs

So I exported the textures and checked them out in Unity and it appears that the seams are a Substance Painter defect at least as far as the lighting is concerned. The lighting is consistent across the seam in Unity.

Jerc said:

Triplanar should have fixed the seam, it's especially efficient on cylindrical shapes. What does your UV look like?

Unfortunately the scratches filter the aluminum material uses doesn't offer triplanar projection. ☹️