[xNormal] Artefacts on a baked normal map

Particle

Hello,

I'm currently working on a small piece that I create for fun. It's a suppressor. I created High and Low on Maya, and then, I generated a cage with the Transfer Maps window.
In xNormal, I import my meshes and I click "Bake".



I precise that the models have the same coordinates in the 3D space. I moved the Low for the screenshot.

The result is ugly as you can see. The details are great on the "Planar" parts, but on all cylindrical parts, I have some ugly artefacts.





To solve this problem, I tried to bake without my cage, or to create a cage directly into xNormal. The result is still the same.
I checked UVs to avoid overlapping, I checked smoothing groups and all is clean. I can't find the problem's source.
If it can help, I'm using the last xNormal's version (3.18.7).

Thanks for taking time to read this post,
Hope you can help me,
Samuel.

EarthQuake

This is pixel padding. It is a good thing. It makes it so when your texture gets mip-mapped in game (sized down) the data doesn't bleed over the edges and cause seams. If anything, you should have even more pixel padding (too much pixel padding isn't a thing) I set pixel padding to 96 pixels in xnormal.

Apply the texture to the model with a realtime shader. You can't really look at a normal map in 2d and point out errors (most types, at least) as that's simply not how it works.

Particle

Thanks for your answer Earth Quake. I understand your vision of Normal Maps. So thanks for the explaination and for the tip.