Problem to bake a text normal map on a flat surface with xNormal

Shudrum

Hi guys !

I'm stuck with baking my normal map. I try to bake a text from a font with a bevel and some little corrections.

The normals seems to be ok, the borders are smoothed and the top is perfecty flat and in another smooth group (I think this is useless).

Here are the model and the result :



Anyone have an idea ?

Thank you so much !

Scruples

Maybe your high-poly is set to use smoothed normals in Xnormal?

Farfarer

Are you using averaged normals in xNormal?

Even if you are, I'd get rid of as much of the huge concave ngons as you can. They won't be helping anything.

Shudrum

Thank you for your answers !

@Scruples : I use the exported normals yep. I've also try with the average normal : same problem.

@Farfarer : Ok, so I'll try with less steps.

AlecMoody

I would try connecting the verts up on the top face into quads. Alternatively, if you are only baking normals and it is a totally flat surface (say for a tiling texture) you could just delete the top face and only bake the angled sides.

Scruples

If you are exporting with .obj are you exporting normals?

Shudrum

Wow, thank you for all your answers.

So, I've changed the steps from 6 to 2, I got quite the same result.

So I've connected all some top verts (not all for testing) like you said AlecMoody, and here are my result :



It is too rounded.

@Scruples : I export with the .3ds format.

@AlecMoody :

It is a test, I'm learning and I try to make the mesh I described here : http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=108215#post1702316.

The entire bake of this model to a low poly is very very weird, I think I'll bake details on flat surface and add them with photoshop, that's why I'm trying this.

I will try what you've said.

Shudrum

YOUHOU !

Thank you so much !!!

AlecMoody, I have removed the top surface, and here are my result :



This is ... perfect

But, just a question then I set this thread to solved : Is it a good process to bake element separatly to add them on a model normal map with photoshop ?

Thank you thank you thank you thank you !

Scruples

You are still getting some smoothing errors and workaround fix is not so great because you will have issues with other high-res bakes. Try exporting high-poly as .obj next time.
And details like these are best made in Photoshop, very quick.

edit:quickly traced the interior and applied glow filter and Xnormal height to normal ps plugin, some color banding but it's not bad for these small details.

Shudrum

Ok, I'll use .obj next time.

When you said to make details with phothop, you talk about using the nVidia plugin ? The tutorials never convinced me, maybe I'll try.

warxsnake

Try nDo or Crazybump for stuff like this

Shudrum

@Scruples: How, yes, I see know that my smoothing is really bad, a big thank you for your example, I'll try this !

@warxsnake: Ok too

AlecMoody

what software are you exporting the highpoly from and what format is it? Xnormal isn't getting the smoothing information correctly and this is something you will want to resolve in your workflow.

Shudrum

I work with 3DSMax and I have exported my models in .3ds

Scruples have said that I should use the .obj format.

respawnrt

You can make that in 1 min with this http://charles.hollemeersch.net/njob

Shudrum

Hey, really nice ! I'll try this !

Thank you