Perfect baking ?

Alecc

Hi there,

I'm following Tobbias Koepp tutorial, and i'm at the baking part. He bakes with maya, and he uses "hard edge / soft edge'.
But I m on 3DSMAX, and we haven't this option.

When I m bake in Substance Painter with 1 Group smooth, it's perfect :


but when I import in Marmoset or 3Dcoat, it's really weird 


I tried to bake with xnormal, but same issue when I import in 3Dcoat 




Conclusion : my baking is perfect only in Substance ( but when I export in other soft, it doesn"t work ). In all other software, I've odd seams.

How to do the perfect baking ? I tried to use cage, without result.

Thanks really much,

A.

Obscura

Make sure swizzle and tangent space matches between the baker and the preview renderer.

AlecMoody

Edit:
I reread the post. I guess you have no smoothing splits and those artifacts are just shading errors.
Obscura's advice is the first thing I would check.

Alecc

what is "swizzle" ? Can you develop your idea about "tangent space matches " ?
My workflow is : 

- 3d block out
- refine block out shapes, and add chamfer on all border
- make uvs
- import and sculpt in Zbrush
- Set smooth group ( juste one, my better result for now, in substance )
- export High poly, LP and Cage
- bake

Tobbias Koepp adds the step to set hard edge and soft edge on borders, but I don't know how  to do it in 3dsmax...

@AlexMoody > Do you mean I have to set one smooth group for each uv part ? 

Obscura

You should really check out this thread:
http://polycount.com/discussion/107196/youre-making-me-hard-making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts/p1

Swizzle is the direction of the axes. Like its y+ or -.

Also look up "mikk tangent space".

BradMyers82

Why not bake with Marmoset?  It is in my opinion the best baker out there and it will be perfect for marmoset which it seems like you are using already.  Learning to use Marmoset baker is stupid simple and incredibly versatile.

Semi

Looks like the greens are flipped. Try that and switching the normal map mode to Mikkt in Marmoset. If that doesnt work check the other normal map threads on Polycount. 

Alecc

@Obscura > amazing thread, I'm reading it ! thanks dude

@BradMyers82  > Yep, why not in marmoset ! but it doesn't change my problem about group smooth and tangeant ( this step is before the baking )
For example : Marmoset prefer 1 groupsmooth like Substance ? or many gorup smooth ?

@Semi  I'll check, thanks

BradMyers82

Ive only done 1 smoothing group bakes in marmoset.  At least for what I do, it doesn't make sense to not bevel some edges so 1 smoothing group works perfect.  You might have tighter budgets then I do though, so I can see why this would be an concern.