Visible edges on normal

melong

Hi,

I know this subject has been brought up a lot before and i read all i could find here on polycount about normal baking issues before coming and bother, but i couldn't find any solution for this problem:




I made the model in max and then exported and baked with xnormals.
As you can see on the normal map, there is obvious shading errors running along the inside edges of the faces making them stand visible where the surface should be flat. Here's what i get in marmoset:



I took care to follow thoses advices i found here on PC
-matching the high and low topology as much as possible
-assigning different smoothing group to each uv shell
-used a proper averaged cage for baking
but still the issue remained.

If you could help me find what i do wrong here, that would be great!
Thanks in advance.

cptSwing

Hm. If exporting from Max, have you set your viewport to qualified normals (Xoliul Shader has a little script to do this for you), and are you exporting from Max with Direct3D viewport instead of the default Nitrous?

You could also try flipping your green channel in Marmoset..

melong

Ok i think i just figured it out while i was trying to explain precisely what i was doing.

Recently i tested Farfarer's plugin to bake normals for unity in Xnormals and it was specified to check "export tangeants and bi normals" when exporting the mesh.

I leaved this box checked to make my test for marmoset for which i need xnormal's default tangeant basis.

If i uncheck this box to export my models, i get a cleaner look either in the normal map or in marmoset with flat surfaces looking actually flat.




I'm not sure what is actually happening under the hood (why tangeants and bi normals may affect the baking) so if you guys know a bit more about it or have greats links that explains that that would be cool.
Thanks!