Normal Baking Artifacts 3dsmax 2012

FrostWolf

Hey guys, first post on the site even though i've been lurking for quite a while. I hate for my first thread to be one of shamelessly pleading for help but i've hit a bit of a brick wall on this one.

Below is an asset i'm working on for a Lovecraftian Style seafront environment, i modeled the high poly and reduced it down to the low by removing edge loops etc, for some reason i get these strange artifacts when i'm baking the normals from the high to low, any ideas what could be causing this?

I'm using 3dsmax 2012

I've checked the Normals on both the high and low poly models and they're all facing the correct way.

I've also tried baking out about 10 times with 5 different smoothing groups setup and get the same errors regardless.

trebor777

that's very weird colors for a tangent normal map...
Have you tried to bake in a different software ( like xnormal ) just to compare results?
Any symmetry in the UVs ? sometimes, baking doesn't like overlapping UVs, so if you do, offset the mirrored part by 1U in the uv space.

FrostWolf

Yeah i thought the colours were odd for a tangent normal map too, here's a render from Xnormal, i downloaded it to compare results like you suggested. The UV islands with red dots in them are overlapping UV's , i did try a render by removing the overlapping pieces but the result was still the same artifacty mess.

It looks like the hard edges of the low poly are showing up clearly in the normal map but i don't understand why :S. Half a mind to just delete the mesh and start all over again which would be a shame because i've already begun texturing it, i just opted to ignore a Normal entirely, but i'd rather find a solution than just avoid the problem altogether

Teessider

Are you using nitrous? That could maybe causing some issues. Are there any lights in your scene as well?...Could you provide us with a screenshot of your bake settings please?

Ive had this issue (even in 3ds max 2010) before (where he low poly geometry would come through) but I can't quite remember how I got rid of it!

FrostWolf

Here are my Render Settings. No lights in the Scene and i'm using Direct3D not Nitrous. I noticed you go to Teeside Uni btw, i'm on the Games Art Course but just finished the first year

trebor777

Gaah took me a while to find that topic again, and i'm a postgraduate from there (now working back in france ) as well.
but yeah
Hum
Do you have several or no smoothing groups at all set up ? cause they can mess up projections sometimes. Ideally you'd want just one for the whole mesh, for the projection phase only.

I suggest you read this, (and share it with your class mates, cause no one on the teaching team will taught you this: http://tech-artists.org/wiki/Normal_mapping )

Hope that helps!

cptSwing

are your uv's welded? are you exporting smoothing groups in the format you use for xnormal? have you set xnormal to "use imported normals"?

joebount

For xnormal, export the obj with the maya presets, it usualy helps.
And check that your uvs are welded and not screwed