Projection + Shading Problems

Froya

I have an issue with my normal map projections, when i project the high poly onto a plane it works fine but when i try and project it using the low poly model it seems to pick up all the edges on the normal map (See image one) any kind of help is welcomed or redirection.

I have another problem which is related to the previous as when i use the normal map on the plane then add geometry it seems to change the way the light moves across the object and breaks up the flow of the normal map even though i have only added a few edges loops and moved them to add more depth. This is also seen when importing into UDK(see image below)

Thank you for your time and i hope you can help me!

Bartalon

Adding and moving edges around changes the direction of the face normals from which your normal map bake was initially calculated. Looking at your first image, it appears as though your low poly may have had all hard edges when you baked your normal map. It baked fine on a plane because there is only 1 face normal to calculate rather than the bunch that makes up your low poly blade.

You may want to check out EarthQuake's thread on the relationship between normal maps and hard/soft edge (aka smoothing groups).