Normal Map Baking Artifacts - Maya 2014

agitat3d

Hi,

I have been getting an issue when baking normals in maya 2014.

Gnerally I use a combining of bevelling and subvidiving on my high poly and both are causing artifacts in my normal map.

PLease see the attached image for an example.

Has anyone else encountered a similar issue?

If so is there a known fix?

Thanks for your help in advance.

Eric Chadwick

The Polycount Forum thread Of Bit Depths, Banding and Normal Maps might help.

We have more info here.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_map

agitat3d

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

The Polycount Forum thread Of Bit Depths, Banding and Normal Maps might help.

We have more info here.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_map

Thanks for your reply.

Yes I saved out at 32 bit .exr from maya an it fixed the issue.

Problem now is that when I convert to 8 bit I get a lot of noise.

Is there a way to bake as a 16/32 bit .TGA?

EarthQuake

Noise is expected, it's a matter of bit-depth precision. 8-bit files can't store the full precision, so you get blocky stair step artifacts, or noise.

You can bake tiff in xnormal for 16 bit, but most game engines don't support 16 bit so you will need to convert to 8 bit anyway.

agitat3d

EarthQuake wrote: »

Noise is expected, it's a matter of bit-depth precision. 8-bit files can't store the full precision, so you get blocky stair step artifacts, or noise.

You can bake tiff in xnormal for 16 bit, but most game engines don't support 16 bit so you will need to convert to 8 bit anyway.

Thanks for your reply.

As a side note, what baker would you recommend?

EarthQuake

They all have pros/cons. I would say whichever baker your engine's tangent space is synced to. Or you can always bake object space, and convert tangent space in handplane, in that case use whichever baker is most convenient to you.

agitat3d

EarthQuake wrote: »

They all have pros/cons. I would say whichever baker your engine's tangent space is synced to. Or you can always bake object space, and convert tangent space in handplane, in that case use whichever baker is most convenient to you.

Yes I am favouring the handplane approach currently. Baking in object appears to give cleaner bakes too.

Thanks again.