UV Seams, Low Poly Mesh and NM Help
I've been having difficulties with getting my head around where to place UV splits, specifically for a good bake and optimised mesh. I've read all the literature including EQ's posts, the Polycount Wiki and 'Beautiful, Yet Friendly' - so I understand on a basic level that they should be placed where your model has a hard edge and/a different material.
However, does that mean that I can go into every model thinking 'There's a hard edge (> 70°) right here, so I'll put a seam and a smoothing group there?'. This approach would probably result in too many splits, wouldn't it? So how else can a seam's location be determined?
Here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sl8zm15dq24nso1/low.obj?dl=0 - is an obj of a low poly dagger that I've been trying to bake properly. This is the best bake I've gotten so far:
I placed a split on all the hard edges but this seems like way too many - hence the confusion; the bake seems alright to an extent but I've got too many splits. There are also some dark patches on the underside of the hilt (I fixed the issue seen on the blade). What would be the best way to unwrap this thing? I use 3DSM to bake.
This is the high poly:
Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
However, does that mean that I can go into every model thinking 'There's a hard edge (> 70°) right here, so I'll put a seam and a smoothing group there?'. This approach would probably result in too many splits, wouldn't it? So how else can a seam's location be determined?
Here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sl8zm15dq24nso1/low.obj?dl=0 - is an obj of a low poly dagger that I've been trying to bake properly. This is the best bake I've gotten so far:
I placed a split on all the hard edges but this seems like way too many - hence the confusion; the bake seems alright to an extent but I've got too many splits. There are also some dark patches on the underside of the hilt (I fixed the issue seen on the blade). What would be the best way to unwrap this thing? I use 3DSM to bake.
This is the high poly:
Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
Replies
Well, it depends on many factors, really. If you have time, I suggest you take a look at my Practical Guide on Normal Mapping(it's in my signature). When you do normal maps and UVs you have to understand how it all works to properly utilize UVs. You have to know what you can get away with. It all comes down to your experience and experimentation, but you should be able to predict baking results really well if you know what you're doing. When I do UVs I always know which parts of the mesh needs to have their own uv splits and which can be stitched, which won't be noticeable anyway etc.
Thanks a lot! Your guide is very straightforward and informative. So as a general rule you can be a bit loose with seams on parts of the mesh that aren't that visible?
Now Mudbox is showing an issue with the overlapped UVs:
But Marmoset displays it fine:
What's happening?