Odd normal issues
Hey all! 
I'm having some trouble with seams and possibly my topology.
Can anyone please tell me how to fix the weird shading and possibly some topology improvements?
Thanks!
I'm having some trouble with seams and possibly my topology.
Can anyone please tell me how to fix the weird shading and possibly some topology improvements?
Thanks!
Replies
Hey I hope this helps. You seem to have the whole thing mirrored along that edge on the side, but what you can do it delete that and just connect each edge together straight across like shown.
I'm not sure whats going on in the purple part, but if it isnt floating geo, you may have some issues with those edges terminating along the front there.
You're gonna want to avoid long, thin polygons usually, they tend to make normal maps unhappy.
Also, make sure that wherever you have a 90 deg. angle you also split the smoothing groups (hard edges in Maya) and break each section apart on the UVs. So essentially, every time you have a 90 deg. angle, you'll also have a seam in your UVs.
Good luck!
*Edit*
If I were you I'd just cut out that highlighted detail and make it a separate mesh entirely and just stick it right into the pillar, it'll make unwrapping, baking, and texturing a million times easier :P
I changed some of the topology as you suggested and changed the smoothing group and now it looks alright!
Didn't detach the geo so it floats tho, as I'm not sure if the engine would like that.
But yeah, bake looks decent enough to move on to texturing
Thanks a lot!