NES Model - Critique and Assistance Please

LightningShard5

Hello everyone. I am posting my work here in hopes that I can get some critiques on how I can improve my modeling and possibliy some solutions to the problems that I am facing. Thanks. Here is the breakdown.


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Both the AO and the Normal map were backed out in XNormal. As you can see the normal maps are causing very odd shading that I can't seem to fix, though I have deduced that the problem is in the low poly and is most likely the result of the Tris. Though I have no idea why the bottom of the NES won't fully project. All critique and help is welcome!

Anthricus

Hey dude,

The high poly on this is looking really nice.
the problem with your bakes is coming from smoothing groups.

This quick description of smoothing groups will hopefully help!

they dictate how light is shaded across your models surface. you should give all triangles/polygons that are planar to one another the same smoothing group.
This will give them the appearance of being shaded as one piece.

You can then rebake out your maps and the lines should be gone.
http://oldwiki.polycount.com/SmoothingGroups

That link shows a bit more info than my basic breakdown.

Keep it up dude its looking good!

Anthricus

You can try auto smooth to start with and play around with the tolerances in 3ds max.
But the general rule of thumb is if the next face/tri is at a 90 degree angle from the previous it should probably have a new smoothing group.

It is kind of odd how the edge lines arent on your AO but are on your normals. what program did you use to bake them?

LightningShard5

I don't think that's the problem. The smoothing groups are all set to thier individual islands on the maps, and the smoothing groups are apart of the .Obj I'm using in Xnormal. I will take a look at that link though and hopefully find some new info there. Thanks.