normal map seams in max - noob question

fortunae

I'm very new to this whole 3d modeling thing, and I've had a lot of issues with creating a normal map, but none of them have stumped me like this. There are these very obvious and ugly seams showing up. Any idea's on how to prevent this from happening?

high poly:


Low poly:

Normal Map:

Normal map as diffuse:

Fwap

Did you bake in Max?
If you baked in another application you may have to invert the green channel.
Also Hard edge on UV seams, where you have a uv split, needs to be a smoothing group split.
Textools has a function that does this for you.

fortunae

Fwap wrote: »

Did you bake in Max?
If you baked in another application you may have to invert the green channel.
Also Hard edge on UV seams, where you have a uv split, needs to be a smoothing group split.
Textools has a function that does this for you.

Thanks for the reply! Yes I'm baking in max. I just tried separating each uv element into a different smoothing group using textools, but the results were no different. Here's some nicer screenshots from UE4. Ignore the ear/split lip.

Fwap

In UE4 the green channel will defiantly need to be flipped on your normal if its coming from max.
Max hasn't always been the best at displaying normals, So try flipping the green channel inside UE4 and see if that helps.

fortunae

Fwap wrote: »

In UE4 the green channel will defiantly need to be flipped on your normal if its coming from max.
Max hasn't always been the best at displaying normals, So try flipping the green channel inside UE4 and see if that helps.

Ok, I tried various methods of flipping the green channel, but none them had any effect on the seams, they just made the rest of the normal map funky looking.

fortunae

Ok i partially figured it out. You were right fwap, it was a UE4 thing and I guess max is just bad at dealing with normal maps. I had to change the sampler type to normal in the material in ue4. it solved most of the problems, except for the seams that were created where I mirrored the model after baking. Is there a way to get rid of those seams or is that just the price of mirroring?

no arm/leg seams:


Still seams down the center:

Dan Powell

Depending on how you've created your UVs you may have noticeable seams.

Personally I'd recommend using XNormal or ZBrush to bake with. I've always gotten better results with them than 3DS Max personally - the problem is that there's no global "algorithm" for dealing with normal maps.

XNormal gets pretty good synced results with UE4, which is why I recommend it.

Eric Chadwick

You should never mirror AFTER baking, this changes the tangent basis.

Seams in 3ds Max depend on the material and rendering method, and which version of Max.

You also need to move overlapping UVs out of the UV square. Some info here... http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_map#Mirroring

fortunae

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

You should never mirror AFTER baking, this changes the tangent basis.

Seams in 3ds Max depend on the material and rendering method, and which version of Max.

You also need to move overlapping UVs out of the UV square. Some info here... http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_map#Mirroring

It worked! thanks! I'll try baking with one of those other programs to see if i can reduce the other seams.