Strange Normal Artefacts - XNormal
polycounter lvl 5
Hi all,
Got some very weird artefacts appearing on my really simple objects when baked from XNormal.
They are only particularly visible when a high glossiness or metalness value is used, and only appear extremely faintly in the Normal map (I.E. I can Clone Stamp it out, but this is destructive - not a workflow I like.)
Here's some Screenshots:
Notice the lack of initial visibility on the Normal map.
You can see where it's occuring on the Normal map if you go to the Red channel, and bump up the Contrast a lot;
A few things I've checked before posting:
- The Normals on the high poly, and low poly object, both look fine.
- UVs are split at hard edges.
- The topology of the low poly object covers the shape of the low poly object reasonably well, in my opinion.
- A cage is being used to bake using the Low poly
- XNormal Settings are Default, with a few minor changes to items such as the Texture resolution, and the Anti Aliasing.
Thanks all.
Got some very weird artefacts appearing on my really simple objects when baked from XNormal.
They are only particularly visible when a high glossiness or metalness value is used, and only appear extremely faintly in the Normal map (I.E. I can Clone Stamp it out, but this is destructive - not a workflow I like.)
Here's some Screenshots:
Notice the lack of initial visibility on the Normal map.
You can see where it's occuring on the Normal map if you go to the Red channel, and bump up the Contrast a lot;
A few things I've checked before posting:
- The Normals on the high poly, and low poly object, both look fine.
- UVs are split at hard edges.
- The topology of the low poly object covers the shape of the low poly object reasonably well, in my opinion.
- A cage is being used to bake using the Low poly
- XNormal Settings are Default, with a few minor changes to items such as the Texture resolution, and the Anti Aliasing.
Thanks all.
Replies
Also, in Marmoset, you'll need to ensure you've set the mesh tangent basis to MikkTSpace.
Aside from that, it could just be a bit depth issue. Ensure you're saving out to TIF format from xNormal for the best results.
The MikkTSpace Plugin in xNormal has the 'Compute Binormal in the Pixel Shader' checked when I double-click it to open the options - bit of a pain having to check this every time you bake, but I tried it before trying the Default settings.
The Tangent basis in Marmoset is set to xNormal, too - so perhaps it's an issue of saving the file as a TIF, I'll try this now!
Cheers
You should only need to set it once.
As for the issue you're having, yes, it looks bit-depth related. Bake out of xNormal as a tif (I usually bake it at a higher resolution, too), convert to 8bit, and size it down to the desired resolution, and resave it out. It'll get rid of those sharp lines, but you might then notice some slight noise in the normal map.
To be honest though, this issue won't be noticeable in 99% of cases. Especially when it's textured.