Can´t repair Smoothing Groups

Gazu

Hi People,

i need your help and advice about how to fix smoothing group errors.





I mean, when the Normal Map is applied it looks almost clean. But there are some small spots (For Example on the right side of the Dustcover) which i cant repair.
I have tried a lot :
Edit Normals -> Break, Unify, Reset.... -> Set SGs to UV Shells
Triangulated with Connect and at FBX Export -> Same Result
Reset X-Form....

What else i can try?

Thanks,
Gazu

EarthQuake

Have you set the tangent space in Toolbag? In the object properties there is a dropdown to set tangent space, make sure to set it to the app you baked the normal map in.

Gazu

Hi EarthQuake!

When i set the Tangent Space to 3DSMax, i think that he flips the green channel.
And i baked it With Tangent Up in 3DSMax.

But anyway, i inverted the Green Channel on my Normalmap in Photoshop and yeah...it helped out a bit

Thanks for this.


But there are still some small spots where the Triangles become visible. Depending on how the light hits the weapon:

stevston89

Try exporting as an obj with precision 12 and normals, uvs, and smoothing groups checked. At the end of the day though the errors you are talking about no one ever notice in a game. Even a first person shooter. So I wouldn't be too concerned.

Gazu

Hey Stevston!
Thanks for your post.
I gave a try with OBJ and its the same result.
But as you say, those errors are so small, that nobody will see them.

I think that the Diffuse,Spec and Gloss Map will make them more invisbile,too.
Obscura said to me, that there is no reason to look so close at a normal map ^^

Olli.

Your normal map has a limited amount of pixels, meaning it is only capable of smoothing a certain size normal surface variation. If your surface normal changes a lot in an area thats only covered by a single pixel of your normal map, theres no way that single pixel will be able to make the surface smooth.
heres an image to explain. i tried to make it kind of like the piece of model in your pic but i exaggerated the shapes a bit to make the problem easier to see.
rendered in normal space blended with a grid (consider each tile one pixel)


What you need to do to fix this is one of two things

1) bake normal map in higher resolution (usually not possible, and will only make the artifacts in your model smaller

2) split your mesh in to smoothing groups in such a way that your normal surface becomes smoother, and therefore easier to manipulate with a normal map.

like so:


this might not look much better, but now you can split your UVs at the smoothing group seams, and thatll give far better results


In my workflow i usually do smoothing groups first, then create UV islands from the SG's, but in some cases ive found it better to create UV's first and then just apply a different SG to each UV island. (its easier to get the surface normals right on the first try by doing SG first though)

- never split SG without splitting UV
- you can split UV without splitting SG, but you shouldn't have to usually.

Gazu

Hey Olli!

Thank you for your nice answer.
I bake Maps for my AK 47 in 4K.

With the setting what EarthQuake said the Normal is nice.
But when it comes to AO Bake, it comes out with this Smoothing Errors.
At the moment i don´t know how to bake a clean AO...
So you mean to add Geometry to this spots which have errors,right?

I set the Smoothing Groups to UV Shells with TexTools and then i bake the informations from the HP.

Mhhhhhhh.....