Normal map with UV seams issue

danni933

Hi guys!
It's my first post here and I have to ask a question.. I've got a problem with the baked normal map that shows the seams exactly where I broke my UV. I tried to search out old threads on polycount and I'm pretty sure it's something that concern with mirrored geometry..but I didn't find nothing that help me. My mesh is a character and I sculpted it in zbrush, I made the low poly in max and baked maps in max (tried also xnormal). It seems the normal map is the exactly inverse in the areas where the seams coincide each others. This thing appears on every piece of geometry in the exact place where i broke the UV.. shirt, trousers, arms, back of head, fingers etc.
I've attached the characters just to make more easy to understand the problem..

Thanks for help.
Daniele.

Eric Chadwick

How did you make this image, which software and what material?

If you're baking in 3ds Max, then you'll get the best results rendering it in Max. If you have specific versions of Max, they won't show maps correctly in the viewport, no matter what you do. What version of Max are you using?

There are ways to get the normal map out to other software as well, check out handplane.

Also this could simply be that you need to invert the green channel.

danni933

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

How did you make this image, which software and what material?

If you're baking in 3ds Max, then you'll get the best results rendering it in Max. If you have specific versions of Max, they won't show maps correctly in the viewport, no matter what you do. What version of Max are you using?

There are ways to get the normal map out to other software as well, check out handplane.

Also this could simply be that you need to invert the green channel.

Hi there Eric, thanks for responding me, actually the pic I submitted is a screenshot from marmoset, if I render that in 3ds max (max 2014) I obtain pretty much the same result.. I've also tried in UE4!
Handplane looks a nice tool! but in this case I rendered a tangent space normal map not a object space normal map (never tried to do in max)..so I don't know how to use it.. I attached the normal map of the head btw.. you see? It seems that right side is the exact opposite than left side. I don't really know how to fix it!

Eric Chadwick

It is supposed to be this way. This is why:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_map#Tangent_Basis

For your problem, Toolbag should be able to render without seams. I bet your green channel is inverted.

Eric Chadwick

Also, I moved this to the Marmoset section. You'll get better replies here, since this has to do with rendering in their app.

Are you using Toolbag?

danni933

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

Also, I moved this to the Marmoset section. You'll get better replies here, since this has to do with rendering in their app.

Are you using Toolbag?

Ok thanks! I'll try to read into the link! Btw yes I use toolbag to preview my models! Of course I'd like to have a good normal map in the game engine too!

almighty_gir

In toolbag2 you can select your mesh and then change the tangent space type to match whatever you baked with (you mentioned max and xNormal, we support both of these). Select the appropriate one, and if the issue persists, then check the "flip y" button in the materials normalmap drawer.

danni933

almighty_gir wrote: »

In toolbag2 you can select your mesh and then change the tangent space type to match whatever you baked with (you mentioned max and xNormal, we support both of these). Select the appropriate one, and if the issue persists, then check the "flip y" button in the materials normalmap drawer.

It seems flipping Y works! Thanks guys!

danni933

Hi there guys. Sorry, I'm still here with pretty much the same problem. I baked maps in xnormal with smooth normals set in average and flipped the green channel for every piece that required in PS etc and the result for the final NM was quite good in marmoset. But then I tried to generate some maps with crazybump, a friend of mine did also a test with ddo and in the diffuse map these ugly seams are came back. It seems that there aren't so much visible but still here. In UE4 the model looks a lot messed up too with the normal map applied only. Shading problems where uv break. In marmoset looks ok. This drive me crazy.

Eric Chadwick

Use Handplane.