Normal map "stupidity"

Stromberg90

Hy there everyone, i am sorry to post another normal map thread.

But as the situation is i have some real problems with them.

So here is the case, at realy simple objects normal mapping goes fine, and same when i helping out with organic stuff.
But i am more of a hardsurface guy, and have mostly done weapons for normal mapping.

One of my problems is, that modo does not have smoothing groups.
So what i have tried is splitting the mesh at where the hard edges are and i have splitted those in the uv map aswell, setup a cage and still i get horrible normals maps.
I have also tried without splitting the mesh at hard edges, still gets problems.

I have read and watched some many topics and tutorials about normal mapping, but i never seam to get it right, so it would be realy nice if someone has done some of this in modo before, and would offer some help

I know my text might seam a bit cluttered, they tend to end up like this:poly121:

Eric Chadwick

Yeah, so a clearer thread title might help, like "normal map hard edges in modo?" You can't rename a thread title after posting, but it might help next time.

I don't use modo so I can't help much, except to point to the first link after a Google search for "modo smoothing"

Michael Knubben

Post your model and normalmap, and we'll be able to help more effectively.

PredatorGSR

Are you baking in modo or using an external program like xnormal?

Stromberg90

Thanks everyone for taking the time to try and help me

EricChadwick: Yeah, bit of a bad title, about the modo smoothing link thats what i have tried.

MightyPea: Will post it soon

PredatorGSR: I forgot to add that i use xNormal, since modo does not support cages.

PredatorGSR

There are a couple of things with xNormal to keep an eye on. The first is with cages, you can't just click the cage checkbox to use a cage, you have to actually load in the LP and HP meshes into the 3D viewer, manually adjust the cage in there, save it out as SBM, and then bake using the SBM files. I also found that I had to bake at really high resolutions, like 4k for a 2k map, otherwise I would get seams due to lack of pixel detail, and it also faked the super sampling since xNormal doesn't have it.

But yea, without posting normal maps, models, and the normal map on the game model, its hard to say what the issue is, there are so many ways you can screw up a normal map.

Stromberg90

PredatorGSR: Thanks for replying, i have done the cages in xNormal, the main problem is how modo lacks smoothing groups.
It's difficult for me to explain how it is aswell, altough this is a know'n problem at the modo forums, i still have not found the answers to it.
I will post some images in a few hours to might shed some light at the problems.

Ben Apuna

The other thing about Modo and xNormal is that "out of the box" Modo won''t export proper vertex normals to xNormal via OBJ.

You need to change the "Smooth Normals" settings for both the low poly and high poly models in xNormal from "Use exported normals" to "Average normals".

Spliting the edges in on your model in Modo where you want hard edges is the right way to do it.

Another idea might be to use Chai's pipelineIO script for Modo.

Stromberg90

Ben Apuna: It is the splitting edges technice that i have tried to get working, but in the UDK engine, you get like open edges where you can see trough the model where you have splitted it.
But i might give it one more go

Ben Apuna

I rarely get any problems with split edges from Modo exported to UDK, really just an occasional pixel peeking through a seam here and there.

Let's hope Luxology sorts out the FBX vertex normal problem with the next service pack.

EDIT:

Looks like they're working on the issue.

Stromberg90

Hm, i got realy bad seams, atleast i tought they where quite bad.
Looking at the script right now, seams realy nice.
Hope luxology does make modo more game friendly