Overlapping UVs and Normal Map Baking issue.

Hayden Zammit

Banging my head against the wall trying to learn how to do normal maps correctly.

My current workflow is:

Move overlapping UVS -> Triangulate mesh -> bake -> move back overlapping UVs and export into Marmoset.

Here's what it looks like from one side:



And here's what it looks like from the side that had the overlapped UVs that were moved before baking.



It looks fine on both sides in Maya, but as soon as I export to marmoset I get that bad result. I don't really know any other way to approach it other than Nnt overlapping the UVs, but the piece is a gun and it seems like a massive waste of space if I don't overlap.

Any help would be appreciated. I'm really starting to hate normal maps.

Bek

Is it required to move the shells back to overlap when exporting to marmoset? Try without it perhaps. Theoretically it will either repeat (so it's overlapping anyway) or ignore it..

Perhaps take a look at the marmoset thread here or the pdf documentation for it.

JonathanLambert

What format are you exporting to and what are your settings?

Hayden Zammit

What format are you exporting to and what are your settings?

I think I've figured the issue out. I'm exporting as an FBX. I had to turn off tangents and binormals.

EarthQuake

Do this in maya:

Lock normals
Triangulate
export

Will fix your issue. This happens when you load quads into marmoset, as marmoset may reverse the triangle order on import. Make sure to do the lock normals step, otherwise your vertex normals will change a little bit when you triangulate and you'll get smoothing errors.

edit: oh wait, you say you've triangulated already? What does your mesh look like without the normal map then? Do you have hard edges on one side but not on the other?

dirigible

You are using a mirrored normal map, yes?

I will bet you 5 dollars that one side of your model has either different triangulation or different smoothing groups from the other side of your model.

Hayden Zammit

Do this in maya:

Lock normals
Triangulate
export

Will fix your issue. This happens when you load quads into marmoset, as marmoset may reverse the triangle order on import. Make sure to do the lock normals step, otherwise your vertex normals will change a little bit when you triangulate and you'll get smoothing errors.

I was doing exactly this for a few hours yesterday and it just wouldn't work. I'd lock the normals and then triangulate, but it would mess up my smoothing groups no matter what I did. Oddly enough, the fix was to go out of View port 2.0 in Maya. For some reason, being in view port 2.0 messed up the smoothing when triangulating.

edit: oh wait, you say you've triangulated already? What does your mesh look like without the normal map then? Do you have hard edges on one side but not on the other?

I just had to turn off Tangents and binormals when exporting as an FBX to solve the issue.