3ds max 2012 cuts out top of normal map bake

Camelback

Hi, I'm having some trouble with baking my normal map in 3ds max and I've tried to fix it myself but google is not my friend right now.

Well, the problem is that when I bake it totally cuts off the top part of the map and it only shows up blank. I'd really appreciare some help on this since I'm totally lost about what I should do.

The UV:

The failed normal map:

Thanks!

BARDLER

Well that doesn't look like a normal map. Looks more like an ambient occlusion map or maybe displacement map. Check that your settings are for baking a normal map and not something else.

Camelback

Sorry, dont know why that happened heres the images again. Tired





Still cuts out the top of the normal map though.

BARDLER

It could be something weird with the cage, but I feel like this is just a 3DS Max bug since it cuts straight across your UVs. Have you tried using another program like xNormal to see what happens?

GeeDave

Problems with normal maps are left, right and centre on this board eh?

Could you provide a little bit more information? How you're setting things up, the position of the low/high objects, the cage, the smoothing groups. Are you saving the image in the render window (don't do this) or taking it from it's save location?

Throwing your objects into xNormal might just work flawlessly, but regardless of that, this is still an issue that you may run into again. Since this is very much not normal behaviour, it makes sense to find out what's going on.

Camelback

GeeDave wrote: »

Problems with normal maps are left, right and centre on this board eh?

Could you provide a little bit more information? How you're setting things up, the position of the low/high objects, the cage, the smoothing groups. Are you saving the image in the render window (don't do this) or taking it from it's save location?

Throwing your objects into xNormal might just work flawlessly, but regardless of that, this is still an issue that you may run into again. Since this is very much not normal behaviour, it makes sense to find out what's going on.

Well, I go from hipoly to low - then import merge the hipoly into my low so they are at the same position,the cage I use use basic settings but push till it envelops both meshes, the smoothinggroups are frmo the UVshells. I take the image form the save location.

I tried xNormal and it works, but as you say I want to figure this out, since I like this way of rendering alot better tbh.

Camelback

I fixed it, I had some overlapping faces that I fixed, and after that the bake went smoothly, no weird stuff. I dont know personally why it would behave like that because of overlapping faces, but maybe someone can enlighten me. Cheers anyhow.