Normal Map Help

Reyne

Hey Guys,

I am working on an item for Dota 2 and I have run into some issues



With experimentation i have solved most of the issues in the bake except for the one I have the biggest issue with: The pinching near the 'tip' of the sword. I have tried varying the topology and I have tried separating the blade into a range of smoothing groups but I cant seem to get rid of the wavy/pinching effect.

I suspect it has to do with the topology of my low poly mesh but I can't seem to find a way of modelling it that does not result in the waviness seen in this image.

I've been struggling with it for over a day now and I just can't figure it out. So any help would be greatly appreciated.

BARDLER

Did you triangulate before you baked? Also how did you set up your smoothing groups?

Reyne

I have tried manually triangulating and baking in 3ds Max and I have also used the automatic triangulation created in an .obj export to bake in Xnormal.

As for smoothing groups I've tried several things:

I always separate the area 'inside' the blade and I have experimented with separating the flat surface of the blade from the 'sharp' surface of the blade. (I have a different smoothing group on the top and bottom version of the 'sharp bit).

odium

Make sure those smoothing groups are split. Theres a few places on your mesh you can split realy nicely, for example anywhere theres a natural seam on your texture anyway.

Most of all, make sure that your UV islands of both sides are offset by 1 on the uv map. It doesn't look like it is, and looks like the front/back sides are welded together. Thats whats causing your odd smoothing there. So in short, yeah, its your smoothing groups.