Normal Map generation through xNormal issue?
polycounter lvl 2
Hey all,
I've been trying my hand at texturing and normal mapping lately. I do some 3d modelling for fun in my free time and in between classes as this doesn't apply to my field of study but I've never been motivated to go past modelling as every time I've tried baking a normal map it's turned out horribly. Anyway I'm seeking help now as I've got another interest in trying to texture again.
As predicted, I'm having issues in getting a clean map and am wondering if anyone can give me direction on what I'm doing wrong. Currently I work by making a high poly in 3ds max, then a low poly, set low poly smoothing groups to one group, then set up UVs for the low poly with an unwrap uvw modifier. Export low poly as .sbm in low poly with cage unchecked, export high poly as .sbm as high poly with export normals unchecked. Import both into xNormal, in the normal map options set the swizzle coordinates to X+ Y- Z+, baking options are edge padding of 4 with a bucket size of 512 using the default renderer and 4x anti aliasing. (closest hit if ray fails and discard back-faces hits are both checked.) In tools, open ray distance calculator and run for ~60 seconds, press stop and say copy. Then bake normals.
In this instance I am modelling a fantasy sword, and before exporting as .sbm I split the grip from the actual body of the sword on both the high poly and low poly and bake those separately. Here is the 3ds max file for those interested which contains the high poly and low poly
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66001658/sword/sword.max
After baking I get this result:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66001658/sword/singularsmoothinggroup.png
Some problems can already been seen on the blade right above where the grip would sit from here but to show what I mean I took some pictures of it in the xNormals 3d viewer with the normal map applied.
There is quite a lot of weird banding or stretching here, and I imagine this is because those areas on the low poly are triangles, not quads.
Anyway I took the time to make multiple smoothing groups on the low poly and redo the process and received a map like this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66001658/sword/multiplesmoothinggroups.png
It looks a lot...cleaner. This could be because i rendered in 4096x4096 instead of 2048x2048 like the previous one. When applied to the low poly however you see similar, but different results.
Anyway...I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong here. What should I do differently to prevent this stretching issue?
Thank you to all who respond.
(( I'd like to add that after going back over the high poly, there are some weird artifacts occurring. This is probably due to me having a turbosmooth modifier previously before collapsing the object to a single editable poly and thus getting rid of the turbosmooth modifier while still keeping the extra polygons it added. I did this in order to remove and problems when importing as an .sbm but now notice many of my problems on this normal map could be coming from the weird artifacts it now displays. What can I do to preserve the smoothness that a turbosmooth modifier adds while still allowing it to be imported into xnormals without issues?
Here is a version of the low poly with the high poly and turbosmooth modifier
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66001658/sword/sword_update.max ))
I've been trying my hand at texturing and normal mapping lately. I do some 3d modelling for fun in my free time and in between classes as this doesn't apply to my field of study but I've never been motivated to go past modelling as every time I've tried baking a normal map it's turned out horribly. Anyway I'm seeking help now as I've got another interest in trying to texture again.
As predicted, I'm having issues in getting a clean map and am wondering if anyone can give me direction on what I'm doing wrong. Currently I work by making a high poly in 3ds max, then a low poly, set low poly smoothing groups to one group, then set up UVs for the low poly with an unwrap uvw modifier. Export low poly as .sbm in low poly with cage unchecked, export high poly as .sbm as high poly with export normals unchecked. Import both into xNormal, in the normal map options set the swizzle coordinates to X+ Y- Z+, baking options are edge padding of 4 with a bucket size of 512 using the default renderer and 4x anti aliasing. (closest hit if ray fails and discard back-faces hits are both checked.) In tools, open ray distance calculator and run for ~60 seconds, press stop and say copy. Then bake normals.
In this instance I am modelling a fantasy sword, and before exporting as .sbm I split the grip from the actual body of the sword on both the high poly and low poly and bake those separately. Here is the 3ds max file for those interested which contains the high poly and low poly
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66001658/sword/sword.max
After baking I get this result:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66001658/sword/singularsmoothinggroup.png
Some problems can already been seen on the blade right above where the grip would sit from here but to show what I mean I took some pictures of it in the xNormals 3d viewer with the normal map applied.
There is quite a lot of weird banding or stretching here, and I imagine this is because those areas on the low poly are triangles, not quads.
Anyway I took the time to make multiple smoothing groups on the low poly and redo the process and received a map like this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66001658/sword/multiplesmoothinggroups.png
It looks a lot...cleaner. This could be because i rendered in 4096x4096 instead of 2048x2048 like the previous one. When applied to the low poly however you see similar, but different results.
Anyway...I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong here. What should I do differently to prevent this stretching issue?
Thank you to all who respond.
(( I'd like to add that after going back over the high poly, there are some weird artifacts occurring. This is probably due to me having a turbosmooth modifier previously before collapsing the object to a single editable poly and thus getting rid of the turbosmooth modifier while still keeping the extra polygons it added. I did this in order to remove and problems when importing as an .sbm but now notice many of my problems on this normal map could be coming from the weird artifacts it now displays. What can I do to preserve the smoothness that a turbosmooth modifier adds while still allowing it to be imported into xnormals without issues?
Here is a version of the low poly with the high poly and turbosmooth modifier
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66001658/sword/sword_update.max ))