Normal Map

victorqribeiro

Hi guys, here's my first attempt to bake a normal map in 3Ds Max. On the viewport it looks very "ok", but when I import the model on marmoset it gets all noisy. Can someone please tell me why this happens? By the way, where you guys do your transfer maps? Very new in the game art, bare with me.

victorqribeiro

My maps so you can take a look.

Brian "Panda" Choi

try using xNormal, see if you get the same issues.

victorqribeiro

Yeah, i've tried xNormal and got a better result. I also imported it on marmoset to try it out.

reckzilla

can you show your model some more? It looks like it may be both a model depth issue and a smoothing groups issue. Also, the low is really low so you should expect a few things to not show up super amazingly.

Stromberg90

I can see the maps have noise in them, which you don't want.
What settings do you use inside 3ds max?

Enabling antialiasing, supersampling would probably get rid of the noise, although they would take a lot longer to render.
Also I can't remember the optimal settings for 3Ds max.
Personally I use xNormal or Substance Designer/Painter, but that should not matter to much.

Using mental ray or scanline?
I always used scanline when I baked inside 3ds max.

victorqribeiro

Yeah, I was going for a super low poly model. The one in the left is the low the other one is the high. I think it have 100 tris

Gazu

The Noise on 3DSMAX Bakes can be solved by using a Push with a low value.
Ive read about it, but never tried it.

I think the best Results in 3DSMAX are :

Catmullrom / Hammerslay with 1.0

victorqribeiro

Hi guys, here's my today's final model. I'll get back to it tomorrow.
300 tris
xNormal
marmoset (only normal map)
Do you think it's good? A company would use it on an actual game? Thanks for C&C.

victorqribeiro

UPDATE:
Normal + AO

victorqribeiro

Can somebody, tell me why in the name of God why is there this line? I'm mean, I think I did everything right with the cage and the edges and the smooth group. How to fix that?

HashBrownHamish

victorqribeiro wrote: »

Can somebody, tell me why in the name of God why is there this line? I'm mean, I think I did everything right with the cage and the edges and the smooth group. How to fix that?

To me, because your high poly model has a smooth edge, and on your low poly it's very sharp, the values are conflicting.

I get this all the time, best option is to probably chamfer the edge because you can't do much with the smoothing groups here i don't think

Are you talking about the edge of the object or the line at the base of the object ?

WarrenM

That line is a seam. Is this in the Max viewport? Take the assets into the game engine you're targeting and look at it there. The Max viewport is notoriously bad for errors where none really exist.

victorqribeiro

Hi guys, here's some information about my model. It was rendered in marmoset with a normal map baked in xNormal. I don't understand that seam, since I think I did everything by the book. Any suggestions?

victorqribeiro

this is the problem I want to solve

reckzilla

Is the high poly offset at all from the low poly? Did check to see if it may be a geo issue? Were the verts properly merged at bake? Just some of the common solutions, hope it helps.

victorqribeiro

I did it, Haha, I finally did it. Here's my final version so far.

victorqribeiro

[SKETCHFAB]1390ccc7bd9747dface19fc97a8ca299[/SKETCHFAB]

MephistonX

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is to separate your UV map into a few more islands

Where you have chamfered the 90deg edges, try adding a seam there instead and you may get better results (a combination of bot is usually best)

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Baking - have a look on the wiki for a better explanation

DanielPeres

MephistonX wrote: »

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is to separate your UV map into a few more islands

Where you have chamfered the 90deg edges, try adding a seam there instead and you may get better results (a combination of bot is usually best)

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Baking - have a look on the wiki for a better explanation

This! Pay attention to your smoothing groups and UV islands. Try to take a look at 3D Motive - Baking Normal Maps - Tips and Tricks

WarrenM

victorqribeiro wrote: »

I did it, Haha, I finally did it. Here's my final version so far.

How? Leave a cookie for a future googler who might stumble in here.

Soldier63

If you still mind, I personally think your cracks are a little bit unrealistic, like they should be divided in even more cracks.. for example this image would be a good reference but all in all there is good work done right in here!

Swarm22

I think your model is great. I could totally see that being used in a game. The thing about models for games is, an art director wont be as harsh about something as people here will be. Here people will criticize every little detail about your model, and that will help you improve future models, learn what to do and what not to do in the future. When you're making a game you don't have weeks to make something like this, you might have a day or something so whatever you end up with is what they're going to most likely use, you probably won't even have to show it to anybody to have it approved if you're in the middle of a production. I've seen models not nearly as good as this used in games before.

Anyway, the criticism I have for you is the texture. It looks like you just took a rock texture and laid it across the entire model. It's pretty noisy and you're losing a lot of the detail from your normal map in it. I think you should find a rock texture that is a lot less noisy and add in some area specific detail to help bring out the details of your normal map. You should put just as much, if not more time and effort into your texture as you do the model. Doesn't matter how amazing your model is, if the texture isn't good, the model won't look good.

victorqribeiro

Sorry about the delay. It's only fair that I post here what solved my problem. Here it is:
- Set marmoset to work with the tangent space of the software you baked the normals.
- export the obj with normals along with the smoothing group in 3Ds max.
Hope it would help someone.