Persistent seams

Erafic

Hello PC, I guess this is another one of those seam question posts. I've been working on this amphora shaped phylactry:



Things I've tried:

- Green channel flip, improved a lot, not the seam though.
- Try baking with seam edges hardened, no difference on either version.
- Made sure explicit normals are turned on.

I'm starting to wonder if this is something one can fix even.. I'd be happy with a subtle normal seam as long as the shadow wasnt as extreme on one side of the seam.

Can this be fixed or should I do as my friend said and try to cover the seam with something else?

.Wiki

Have you imported your normalmap with the correct compression type and import settings? You need to set it to TC_Normalmap and maybe change the sRGB setting.

Butthair

It would be helpful to see the normal map and possibly uvs too. The shader would be nice if possible, but don't worry about it, especially if it's simple.

I can only make guesses with this much information about it.
It could be that you unwrapped it symmetrically and the UV islands are oriented incorrectly.

It could be as .Wiki is saying about import settings.

LazyGames

The two sides of the seam are the same smoothing group right?

Obscura

I got this when I used my checker texture in the normal slot of my master material. And after I instanced it and have put a normalmap to the normal slot, it didn't notice that my normalmap has the tc_normalmap compression, because of my checkermap that was originally in the mastermaterial. After I replaced it to a real normalmap in the master material too, the seam was gone. So I would say its related to the compression setting.

Erafic

Okay, update time, this is where I stand now.


Big difference so far is that I tried out Handplane, love the tool! But It does leave me wondering what I did wrong in my workflow.. The seams on that model does come of as more tolerable, lest you think it could be optimized more?

This was the difference in the normalmaps from the first version to the latter. Anything you can spot there?


And the basic material I'm running, nothing too fancy. (Glow will be put in an alpha or something at a latter point)


.Wiki
Aye, the compression setting is TC_Normalmap

Butthair
Provided the bits, if they tell a better story than I do.

LazyGames
Aye, the whole model had smooth normals in Maya.

Obscura
I've tried both a master material and the simpler variety, still seems to act like that.

My new question here is, is there something I missed doing that artists usually would do before Handplane was made? And are the seams on the second version what one should expect getting?

Wonkey

You might look at your lightmap and see if the seams line up. You might need more padding right there.

Obscura

You shouldn't get any seam whether with handplane or without except if the uvs are mirrored.
"And are the seams on the second version what one should expect getting?"
No, you should get gradients instead, but it wouldn't really be noticeable on this model, because of the shape and because it has enough geo. How the model looks in UDK without the normalmap applied? sRGB is checked in in the normalmap's texture settings?

Froyok

Have you tried importing your model withe explicit normals on but tangent and binormals off ?