Strange Black Mesh

TheWalkerGod

So i made a low-poly usb in maya and sent it to mudbox. However, i always get this strange black mesh when i make a normal map, i think it's artifacting but i'm not sure. Sometimes it's just near the edges or sometimes it's more major (the pic i have is a more extreme version of it). Can someone explain what's going on and possible fixes for it.

MephistonX

If possible could you show your high poly & low poly side by side and a shot of your uv map, that will help us figure this out, but from what I can see at the moment your edges look too sharp to really be captured by the normal map

http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap?action=show&redirect=Normal+Map - check out some points here to do with the hard edges

but it may even be due to duplicated geometry

Mask_Salesman

I'd say its your bad topo. I can see on your low you also have flat topo intersecting against itself which you've then subd and has densely collected and derfomed for some of it.

Regardless of what culmination of things that may cause it you need to change your bad topo.

passerby

Ya looks like you got some non manifold geo there, which really fucks with smoothign and normals