Normal map seam problem + artefacts in xnormal

marnamai

I have a problem with a rather ugly seam on my normal map, I am using 3ds max, mudbox and xnormal.

entire mesh has 1 smoothing group with the exception of the bottom of the hooves

Someone said I should use a cage in xnormal to get rid of the artifacts? how?

workflow
1 ) made the low poly in 3ds max (editable poly)
2 ) unwrapped it
3 ) exported as .obj from 3ds max
4 ) imported lowpoly .obj into mudbox
5 ) sculpted highpoly based on low poly
6 ) exported highpoly as .obj from mudbox
7 ) baked the normal in xnormal using the low and highpoly .obj's (has some artifacts, no idea how to fix it)
8 ) applied normal map in material in 3ds max

normal map seam (all channels normal)

normal map red and green flipped

wire on normal map

Bartalon

Try setting each UV island to its own smoothing group and re-bake.

As for those artifacts, you can generate a cage inside xNormal using the 3D viewer.

marnamai

Okay the cage fixed the artifacts,

but the smoothing groups confuse me a little ...

I added an extra "edit poly" modifier above my unwrap modifier in the stack and I assigned each island a different smoothing group, so no groups touch eachother with the same smoothing group (body = 1, legs = 2 should each island be unique as, in each leg their own unique group instead of all legs in smoothing group 2?), exported it to .obj. and rebaked it, but the issue still exists.

Isn't there an easy way to select the uv islands via the uvw modifier and assign smoothing groups there?

marnamai

Seems like it's an issue with how each software readst the tangents, when rendered in marmoset toolbag, oddly, it shows how it should looke like in 3ds max

Guess I should't worry about the seam but just use the right tangent for the gameengine the model is for (cryengine 3)?

James Ordner

Don't quote me on this, but I think CryEngine uses its own tangent basis. Whether that is correct or not, they have a plugin for xnormal that you can download that bakes normal maps in the correct tangent basis.

Link

EarthQuake

Make sure you have the normal map applied correctly in max, that it isn't loaded as a bump map or anything weird, and that the strength is set to 100%.

marnamai

http://docs.cryengine.com/display/SDKDOC3/Normal+map+baking+with+xNormal

yea, but I can't find the tool anywhere and the version of xnormal it works with isn't available on the site of xnormal.

Guess I 'll continue my quest on the crydev forums