How can I improve my baking in SD6? my normal/height maps come out blurry.

oraeles77

I hope the image explains what Im talking about. i made a panel with 4 screws in the corners, if I bake in Blender they come out perfect, nice and flat, and but in SD6 they come out terrible at a weird angle.

any suggestions?

Froyok

It's not blurry, it's misaligned because the rays didn't go perfectly perpendicular to the surface.
This could be fixed by modifying the vertex normals of your mesh (or smoothing groups) or by using a cage. More details here : http://polycount.com/discussion/81154/understanding-averaged-normals-and-ray-projection-who-put-waviness-in-my-normal-map

oraeles77

Froyok said:

It's not blurry, it's misaligned because the rays didn't go perfectly perpendicular to the surface.
This could be fixed by modifying the vertex normals of your mesh (or smoothing groups) or by using a cage. More details here : http://polycount.com/discussion/81154/understanding-averaged-normals-and-ray-projection-who-put-waviness-in-my-normal-map

ok, I have a question, is there a quick fix to this? what feature does Blender lack/have which is different in SD? can I click 1 button in SD6 and have this problem disappear?

so is it down to the way the objects are scanned, and currently they are scanned from a single point perspective?

Froyok

Please read the link I have attached in my previous post, it already answer your questions.

NoRank

He means that in blender you're probably baking with non-average normals while in designer you're doing this by default. You can change this by checking the Average normals in the baking tab.

The thing is, there will be other "issues" with baking this way. If you know why this distortion happens, you can prevent it from happening and this is why @Froyok linked you this post. You can paint one "skew mask" in designer to get rid of this distortion and still use one averaged normals bake.

oraeles77

Froyok said:

Please read the link I have attached in my previous post, it already answer your questions.

I did read through it and I couldnt see an answer.

everything in that post is about geometry and baking in generial but not about the baking problem I have in SD6. if it was a geometry problem It would also occur in Blender which it didnt.

oraeles77

NoRank said:

He means that in blender you're probably baking with non-average normals while in designer you're doing this by default. You can change this by checking the Average normals in the baking tab.

The thing is, there will be other "issues" with baking this way. If you know why this distortion happens, you can prevent it from happening and this is why @Froyok linked you this post. You can paint one "skew mask" in designer to get rid of this distortion and still use one averaged normals bake.

yeah cheers for replying with an answer which makes sense. I worked out the average normal thing last night and that seemed to have fixed it. but scew maps, I was looking at them too and I couldnt even begin to work out what they are and despite reading some stuff on them, there was nothing in simple english to explain what they are, and i dont see why I should waste a load of more hours to learn something super super specialist to solve a problem at a very beginner level which is where I am.

NoRank

Skew maps are just masks that tells the baker to use a non average normals in that part where you painted (idk if that's exactly it, thought it makes your normal not distorted in that part where you have masked).

oraeles77

NoRank said:

Skew maps are just masks that tells the baker to use a non average normals in that part where you painted (idk if that's exactly it, thought it makes your normal not distorted in that part where you have masked).

so why do people want their maps distorted to begin with then?

NoRank

oraeles77 said:

NoRank said:

Skew maps are just masks that tells the baker to use a non average normals in that part where you painted (idk if that's exactly it, thought it makes your normal not distorted in that part where you have masked).

so why do people want their maps distorted to begin with then?

They normally don't. If you bake without the average normals you will likely see other issues such as seams across the hard edges, and that's why you use average normals bake. There are other issues as well. And those issues are not only related to how you bake, like froyok linked you, it has something to do with the topology as well, you can control how your mesh normals behave with topolgy and avoid this kind of problem with one average normals bake.

Here is a link for what joe wrote about those kind of bakes, it's the same info you have on that topic but more visually organized https://www.marmoset.co/posts/toolbag-baking-tutorial/
Just so you know, smoothed cage = averaged normals bake, unsmoothed cage = non-averaged normals bake.