Baking proper hard surface normals with maya and Xnormal

AndreasM

Hi there.
I am currently struggeling with baking perfect normals for hard surface objects in Xnormal. I am currently using maya 2012 and would be really happy, if someone could help me.

This is the low poly object on which I want to bake my normals



The high poly was done in maya and zBrush.

The Problem is, that I get some serious bugs at the edges. (rendered in Marmoset Toolbag)


My First approach on solving it myself, was to foster my understanding of hard edge baking. I followed [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGszEIT4Kww"]this[/ame] tutorial and took care of everything mentioned. (At least I think so ^^")

So this is what I already took care of:
-Making sure, both objects are in the same position
-Cutting the UV where bleeding occurs.
-Using a cage based on the low poly
-Baking on hard edge.

Pls let me know, if you know a solution for my problem or any source of information which would help me. Thanks

Bal

Didn't watch the video, but just looking at your lowpoly it looks like it's all hard-edges. You need UV splits along hard edges (and space between the UV shells of course).
Or rather in your case, all the horizontal edges could probably be soft edges instead of hard (before you bake of course).

There are many threads about this stuff all over Polycount, you should look around, and check the wiki.

AndreasM

Hi, thanks for the help! I did a bit more research on your adivce and came to the conclusion that I could either bake my Object on soften edge, which is no option because it would lead to the heavy problems using a specular map later on. (I tried it on soften edge and it seems to be that it orients itself after the normals of the low poly not regarding the normal map.



The second solution was based on your advice to cut more of the shells. I am quite unhappy with this too because it leads to a massive waste of texture space. Also, it would lead to quite a lot of diffuse texture seems i think.



I am note sure, if this is just a render bug but marmoset still draws some lines at the edges. It is way better than before but still not perfect.

I realy did some research but couldn´t find anything that gives a proper workaround for this. I am a bit desperate

EDIT: A lot of people write that cutting the edge only prevents black lines caused by bleeding normals. Most people solved the edges by using a cage. What did I got wrong here?

AndreasM

Bal, I gave your Tipp a try and combined soften and hard edges and it worked perfectly! I had this idear in mind too but put it away because I thought it would be a problem for the specular. Now that the vertical lines are harden and the horizontal ones are soften, the specularity has no problem like it had before when I softened the whole thing.
Thanks mate