Help with normal map.

LJ159

Hey,

I am a student currently working on character modelling in Maya and am at the stage now where I have normal mapped my character and am beginning to texture everything. However I have noticed an issue with the normal map I did for the hair. I have included an image of what it looks like and am hoping someone can help to explain to me what went wrong.

The normal map was done in Mudbox.

Ryandec

I'm no expert(yet ) but to me it looks more like a world space normal than a tangent space which might be why it isn't looking right check your setting in mudbox and make sure you have it set to tangent space normal.

Mr.Moose

You're baking high to low poly yes?

If so make sure that the high poly isn't two sided, if you made it in mudbox you might have a second side thats overlapping itself and causing baking errors.

Check that all the normals are facing the right way and that the high poly is lined up properly with the low.

ETA: What @Ryandec said is probably more accurate, I do not work with either programs you're using mwhahah

Obscura

Yeah, all what you need is to bake a tangent space normalmap instead of a world space one. Mudbox isn't the best place for baking normalmaps by the way. Where you want to render the model at the end? Its an important thing to know before baking normals.

LJ159

Thanks for the replies, I found out that I did accidentally use world space tangents rather than tangent space. Can I ask what the difference is? I'm very new to all of this.

And yes, Mudbox was problematic, my model has an underskirt and a tunic than overlaps in and found that Muxbox baked the information from the tunic onto the underskirt....

Yes I was doing high to low poly, and I made it in Maya so I'm not sure? And thanks for the advice.

Wasp

The left one is world space, think of every vertex having right, front and up the same way as every other vertex.

In tangent space (correct me if I'm wrong), each vertex has their own 'space' instead, which is determined by the (tangent space) normal map. You can do some more reading here:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_Map_Technical_Details