Head and body, neck seam

SuperFranky

Does anybody know a way to hide a neck seam? When I separate body and head to two separate meshes to use two different textures I inevitably get an ugly seam between two meshes. I know some artists hide these seams by using funny looking accessories, but what if there's no way to add an accessory which can hide a seam? Is there anything that can be done in that case?

Noors

What causes the seam ?

Diffuse ? You need to paint with a projecting painting software (zbrush, 3dcoat, mari...)

Normals ? You can edit the vertex normals manually so vertices along the seams share the same normals (like if the mesh was attached), and/or use a normal map.

Things like necklace were used before to hide the texture ratio gap between head and body, but i don't see that often these days.

SuperFranky

Noors wrote: »

What causes the seam ?

Diffuse ? You need to paint with a projecting painting software (zbrush, 3dcoat, mari...)

Normals ? You can edit the vertex normals manually so vertices along the seams share the same normals (like if the mesh was attached), and/or use a normal map.

Things like necklace were used before to hide the texture ratio gap between head and body, but i don't see that often these days.

Do I edit vertex normals after baking maps, or before that?

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SuperFranky

Guys, false alert. I just can't think straight today, it seems. Just baked two meshes separately and it's a-okay. Thanks for the help anyway :thumbup:

Noors

Hehe, no never edit normals after a bake.
And yeah, if you use a normal map, it will compensate the LP normals, whatever is under.
Tho, if you keep it as it is, your projection cage will also be "splitted" on the seam. I wonder if it bakes as good as with pre-edited normals.

SuperFranky

Noors wrote: »

I wonder if it bakes as good as with pre-edited normals.

Hm, I can't see any differences

FourtyNights

Whenever I've baked a head and a body to their own textures, I've just offsetted the UVs of the body when baking maps for the head, and vice versa. Temporarily for the baking process only. That way you don't need to separate meshes and get unpredictable results on the seam area. Especially the seam between two normal maps will be flawless with this technique.

But, when working with two separate material IDs with visible seam area, you'll need to be extremely careful not to bring the seam out in other textures apart from baked normals.

SuperFranky

FourtyNights wrote: »

Whenever I've baked a head and a body to their own textures, I've just offsetted the UVs of the body when baking maps for the head, and vice versa. Temporarily for the baking process only. That way you don't need to separate meshes and get unpredictable results on the seam area. Especially the seam between two normal maps will be flawless with this technique.

But, when working with two separate material IDs with visible seam area, you'll need to be extremely careful not to bring the seam out in other textures apart from baked normals.

That's an interesting technique, thanks for telling me about it:thumbup: