Shading in my normal map?

PsychicFreak

So basically what i've done is rendered a normal map from 3ds max and i am using marmoset toolbag to see the results. I'm pretty sure i got the smoothing groups and uving right since the rest of the model looks fine but on the 1 piece on the front there seems to be some weird shadowing and looking at the normal map it seems to be baked in there.

Any idea what this is and how i can fix it?

SaferDan

Check there are no stray verts?

burtonyang

From what I see with your mesh, you can solve the problem by detaching the UV space of that area so that it's not welded or soften those 90 degree edges (or add a bit more geometry with a chamfer) so your normals project correctly when you use one smoothing group.

EarthQuake

The shading is there to compensate for the mesh normals of the low poly. Your baker(max?) and renderer(toolbag) are not properly synced up. Thus = smoothing errors. This is not a "problem" with the bake, but a technical problem with the tools you are using.

You can bake and preview your model in: Maya, or 3ds max + 3ps shader and Quality Mode normals or the latest(2011?) max with the tangent bias fix(same thing as 3ps shader does). All of which have properly synced up normals, and will display accurate results.

Or, you can use more smoothing groups/hard edges, or bevels on your mesh to get rid of/lesson the effects.

In addition to the circled area, your lighting in general looks pretty wonky in toolbag, and I see other smoothing errors as well.