xNormal = weird inverted looking normal maps?

Arron

Hey poly people,

I'm getting weird inverted looking normal maps from xNormal?

I had this problem not long ago and worked around it using Maya to bake, figured xNormal just didn't like my model. It's happening again with another model though and again Maya bakes fine.

Anyone know If I'm just overlooking a setting or something? I'm sure Maya uses x+ y+ z+ coordinates right? Changing to -Y didn't help.





The bottom images are from xNormal, you can see the error mostly on the pommel.

It's a pain because xNormal is much faster and I could do with using that instead.

Any help is likly to stop me going crazy :poly142:

BARDLER

Did you just smooth all your normals? That is what it looks like.

seb3d

if the screenshot´s edge display shows the softness of the normals they seem to be ok. did you try using a cage in xNormal? and even more important did you move the mirrored uv´s out of the 0,1 uv space for baking? for some reason this seems to work sometimes in maya but i guess xNormal is not happy with overlapping (and mirrored) uv´s while baking.

Arron

I used the script EarthQuake recommended in the hard edges post to add hard edges along the uv borders and any sharp angles. so I think they should be okay?

I also followed the Polycount wiki workflow for normals, Uv mapped the first half then mirrored the geo and moved the mirrored Uv's out of the 0,1 uv space.

I used a cage in xNormal to bake sorry forgot to add that in the first post.

Arron

I just tried to bake the maps for a cube to test and its still giving me weiiird results in xNormal - again Maya does fine. It gives me weird results with both Explicit and averaged normals. Confused

Eric Chadwick

When you export the lowpoly OBJ, are you including vertex normals in it?

In Xnormal, when you add the lowpoly model, are you setting it to use Exported Normals?

Arron

BO0oooooom! Sorted. Thanks Eric. It was the damn OBJ export catching me out. Didn't even realise I had to tell it to export the vertex normals. Lol Wish they would tell you these things in the video tuts.