normal map artifacts

MikeF

For some reason maya's transfer maps has gone retarded on me today and everything is broken. So here's the first issue i'm dealing with, i'm doing a simple high to low transfer and i'm getting these weird artifacts that arnt present (as far as i can see) on the normal map, but show up when applied in both maya, unity and marmoset

MikeF

ok, upon further examination and some manipulation in photoshop, these are infact in the texture itself.

I havnt a clue what could be causing this, i've spent about the whole day reading through the ultimate nm thread to no avail

crazyfingers

can you show us the actual nomral map? that might help with the troubleshoot. Also Make sure your low poly has all edges smoothed during the bake so the normal doesn't try to compensate for hard angles. If anything's the culprit it could be the cage, make sure it's large enough, often times a tight cage will cause your high poly data to be lost and will result in odd geometric formations, patches where the high poly didn't register because it was out of the cage.

MikeF

i've tried just about every combination, hard, soft, all soft, all hard

Here's the output (levels adjusted just so you can see the error better)

EarthQuake

most likely just a filtering issue, i dont think maya filters textures in the viewport or something, if you throw it in a game engine it should be fine.

MikeF

i tried two engines prior to realiezeing it was actually in the texture, so no filtering issue here.... Altho i have seen what you mean in the maya viewport

crazyfingers

have you toyed with the cage much? Looks like it could be minute detailing from your smoothing method, just a guess. Sometimes smooths will adjust geo you're not expecting to change, you might try adding more edge loops to the high poly? Really not sure what else to suggest.

Eric Chadwick

Looks like overlapping meshes to me, like there are two copies of the same mesh, or doubled-up faces.

You could easily paint these out, clone brush for the curvy bits.

mLichy

Try just using offset and turn off cage. Set offset to like 2-3 and render. I don't even use the cage most of the time anymore. Offset works great more of the time, and is alot faster to use.

MikeF

mLichy, is that possible to do in maya transfer maps?
Would i just set the envelope to 0?

mLichy

Um... not sure about that one.. sorry.. I'm not a Maya user at all.

I would assume it has something similar... but I could be completely wrong.

MikeF

alright, i've determined its something with the model, but i can explain it, because i've remade the model 4 times now in every way i could think of and the result is the same across the board, xnormal, maya, even 3dsmax. Time to reformat and start over i suppose.

DarthNater

Why don't you just take it into PS and use the clone stamp tool?

MikeF

because this is happening to everything i do. I cant waste my time touching up every normal map i put out when i know maya is capable of giving me a perfect map for something so simple

Michael Knubben

Darth: I think it might be interesting to find out what the problem is, don't you? While it might be easy to fix for this one, what if it happens on an intricate model in a production pipeline? He might not have the luxury to dig around for ages to find the cause.

kodde

Can you share your maya scene files?

DarthNater

MightyPea wrote: »

Darth: I think it might be interesting to find out what the problem is, don't you? While it might be easy to fix for this one, what if it happens on an intricate model in a production pipeline? He might not have the luxury to dig around for ages to find the cause.

I thought it was just this model giving him issues when he said this: "alright, i've determined its something with the model", but yes, you should find out what the problem is. My suggestion was just a temp fix for this 1 time :P

mLichy

Are you baking this with any sort of lighting in the scene? That shouldn't matter, but it's worth a shot? Otherwise I'm really not sure. I've had weird shit happen in max, where normally my methods always worked, then one time it was completely effed for no reason.

I think I just ended up restarted my computer and max and it fixed the issue? Either that, or its your lowpolys smoothing groups/vert layout that's killing it.

chronic

what is your CPU? could it just be some strange math precision errors?

MikeF

Yeah, i tried redoing it in a scene without any lights or anything else for that matter and still the same thing.

Chronic: intel core 2 4400 @2ghz

Really doubt that one, unless i'm on the verge of a meltdown and my processor is about to die.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, just really need to take a break from this, not getting anywhere and my throat's starting to close up from stress.

Gonna go to toronto for a few days heheheh

ZacD

I see some weird shapes in the normal map, very faint but there...