Normal map looks low res in UDK

Chase

I thought it was my high poly's vert count at first, but that wasn't it. Do I need to flip a channel?


Here's the normal map.


I'm going to go back and eliminate some hard edges so I can eliminate some edges, but that's besides the point. I checked the box TC_NormalMap when I imported too. Maybe the gradients in my Normal Map, which I don't know why those are there, has something to do with it? When I use 3 pooint shader it looks crisp but in udk I get this...

BARDLER

I had an issue with this the other day that I could not figure out why it happened. If you open up your normal map in the content browser it will give you a little info thing at the top of what resolution it will use in game. For some reason UDK was telling my map to be displayed at 512 but I had no idea why. Re-importing fixed it, but I have no idea why it happened in the first place.

Chase

I've reimported a few times and nothings changed. Ill check out the resolution in udk but if reimporting a few times didn't fix it not sure what else to do.

Quack!

What resolution is your Normal Map? Looks correct to me if the image you posted was native resolution.

You can try ticking the box in the texture properties in UDK called "Defer Compression". Although this is just a bandaid as Defer Compression defaults to off once you save, because the game engine has to compress it for game time. Marmoset, 3Point, and other 'viewers' will always display better normals because they don't compress normal maps for game time. UDK does compress it, and it makes your normals look inferior, but this is just part what we have to deal with.

Chase

The normal is 1024x1024. That kinda blows that's gonna look inferior in udk. So there's nothing else you can do huh? What of the gradirnts around the edges?

DInusty

that looks like the noise in ur normal map being turned bad by compression. id say leave those small normal map details to detail normal maps.

to tests try and get the normal bake without that detail modeled in and see if it fixes it.

Adij

Sometime ago i got the same issue and yea - it was compression. Try "TC_normalmap" or "TC_normalmapUncompressed".

passerby

why is there so much wasted map space?

and ya move the high frequency detial out of the main normal map, and put it in a smaller tieling normalmap

Chase

It turned out to be compression. Although I used TC_NormalMap originally, I used TC_NormalMap_Uncompressed this time. Not sure why one's compressed and one's not. Here's the normal map baked in Max


I was told the orange gradients are due to not enough padding and the green/yellow are because of the smoothing groups? I have the smoothing splits where the uv splits are and tried running through Handplane to see if I'd get a better restult.


The gradients are still there, but Handplane did improve the normal map. The seam isn't as noticeable and it took care of at least one shading error.


How do I get rid of the gradients? From what I've learned about Handplane vs not using a synced workflow I have everything right, right?

Edit - Posted the wires. I checked to see if there were any unwelded verts and nothing wrong there. I added a Normal modifier to the stack but the normals wouldn't show up *shrug*

passerby

give us some LP wires, with the vertex normals displayed.

Quack!

tc_normalmap uses your maps full resolution but compresses it for run time. tc_normalmapuncompressed quarters your texture resolution (1024 becomes 512), drops the blue channel, recreates the blue, and doesn't compress it. Often, the lower texture resolution object uncompressed will look better then the higher texture resolution compressed, this just depends per asset.

Thos gradients you have are mesh problems, they look like improper welds on verts or bad smoothing groups / hard edges.

Chase

I retopologized the model in Topogun as one whole mesh. The block is one smoothing group and the cylinder is another. Here's the model without the normal map

passerby

that is part of your problem than, make your UV seams hard edges.

Chase

I ran the Textool operation that turns the UV shells into Smoothing Groups. Isn't that the same thing?

Quack!

I think your problem is a poor low poly mesh. Retopologizing is a pretty bad way to create a lowpoly mesh, it is often better for quality to just create the mesh by hand. Again your issues seam to be that you have bad vert topology, causing shading issues. Fix those and rebake and your errors should go bye bye.

Chase

Ok, I was using Topogun with characters so I figured it would've worked most of the time with hard surface and organic things. I'm sure there are times where it's fine to retopologize, I just don't know when if this wasn't one of those times.

Quack!

It's fine to retopo, as long as it isn't just automatic. You need to ensure the model has a clean geo, this will make sure your normals bake properly and allow you to control the tri density of the mesh so you can make an efficient mesh.

Chase

Looking back at my low poly I see what you mean. Yikes.


My retopoing can use some work since, but I'll try creating it from scratch and match it up to the high. I was trying to maintain clean geo, but it didn't turn out that way. Any suggestions to making the low for something like this? I know this isn't the most difficult thing to recreate, but any tips would go a long way.

Ace-Angel

The UV shell > SG can actually sometimes break, I had several cases were a cylinder was cut on one edge (a low 8 sided one too) and while the harsher angles broke, the edge didn't for some reason, I had to do it manually.

Check to see if that is the case.

Chase

That's simply just checking where the smoothing groups are applied? Then you can also see if any faces were given hard edges that they shouldn't have right?