Shading Issues both on Preview and Render ?

nastobi123

So yeah, Im using max, I'm fairly new to it. I just tackled Normal Maps and I'm having an issue. IDK if this is normal (no pun intended) but let me show you

Render



Viewport



and the normal map itself


idk whats causing this issue.
Please help me

thanks in advance

kmahon99

I generally disregard what I see in the viewport, but you appear to be rendering in just a basic, no-lighting setup. If you want to know whether there's something off with your mesh/textures you should render the model using an advanced lighting model (looks far better as well).

So in order to do this, go to create->lighting and in the drop down list choose 'standard' and select a 'skylight'. Place it anywhere in the scene and go to the properties tab. At the bottom of the properties list you'll find a tick box to enable shadows, turn that on and increase the rays per sample to something between 25-30 for a relatively quick render. Make sure to have your texture put in a Standard material for the render to work properly. Also, put a flat plane under your model so that it looks grounded, this will generate better shading.

Check your resulted render and see if there are any artifacts or shading issues, for me the best way to spot problems is by rendering the model like this. If you want to learn more about this rendering method take a look here: http://www.republicofcode.com/tutorials/3ds/clayrender_stealth/
(This uses a different method with the light tracer but it should provide the same result)

Artist_in_a_box

Look into xoliul viewport shader too or its equivalent (Ive been out of the loop for a while). its a real time viewport shader that will give you a better representation of your maps than max's native viewport.

Though if I where you I would look into taking the mesh into an engine and viewing it there. It will give you more to learn about the pipeline and will show you exactly how it will look in an engine because it is in one lol.

nastobi123

Thanks all for the recommendation.

@Artist_in_a_box mmm, I used Directx material for some real time viewing. Dunno if thats good enough. Its probably because I flipped a UV island without collapsing it because I'm lazy to fix Projections. Hopefully I'll get it fixed soon. Also thanks for recommending Xoliul, I'll give it a shot.

@khamon99 thanks,

Cheers and thanks

AdvisableRobin

What was the normal map baked out in? I want to say this is because the green channel is flipped...at least that is what it looks like.