Need help to get rid of UV seams

PolyLove

Hey guys!,

Ive been having quite some trouble with seams
Appearing on my models when i uv map and also bake my maps!

Tryed adding extra padding and tryed baking in both 3D Max and Xnormal
But no avail.

Just wondering how you guys tackled this issue
And where able to create flawless UV maps
Along with flawless bakes without any seams

Iam pretty solid on everything else, just can shake this issue

Cheers

Bartalon

Might help to post some shots of your problem areas.

Are your UVs mirrored? How does it look in your target engine?

At this point I would suggest setting each UV island to their own smoothing group on the low poly and try your bake again. If you have any hard edges you need to keep for some reason, make UV splits at those locations as well. Also bake with a cage.

PolyLove

Hi Bartalon! thanks for the reply

Ok well this happens to every model i produce especially when I bake my maps!.

So il give you a run down of my process just to see if there is a flaw within that.

I make my high-poly,subdivide with turbosmooth, do my topology 'each part having a different smoothing group' then UV map 'which Iam still learning and use the flatten mapping tool in max 'usually' instead of selecting each individual part and dissecting it. I then bake my maps using render to texture in max as i can adjust the cage alot easier 'not sure what padding amount i should usually use so i select about 5'. Normal map usually appears correct, sometimes the projection is alittle off so I then use quixel to either fix the normal map or i go ahead and create my albedo, occlusion etc maps and go ahead and texture.

I know the error might be with how I unwrap or possibly the baking process..

same process applies to every model I make and everytime i usually end up with really noticeable seams.

I increased the padding more than I usually do for the ammo case i uploaded yesterday and there wasnt any noticeable seams but I still dont fully understand what iam doing when it comes to unwrapping/baking.. just sometimes works and sometimes does not.

Iam wanting to get a solid portfolio together so i need to get my shit together when it comes to baking etc so i don't look like an idiot in a professional studio lol

Eric Chadwick

Make sure to create a UV seam every place you have a hard edge in your smoothing. This will make sure the normal map has enough room to represent both sides of the hard edge. More here: You're making me hard. Making sense of hard edges, uvs, normal maps and vertex counts

The other thing you need to do is make sure the viewer is synched with the baker.
http://www.handplane3d.com/videos.html