Blender 3D baking problem

Valitri

I'm having issues baking a normal map in blender from a high poly mesh to a low poly (I labeled it medium). Here is my image album. Any reason I cannot get the bumps in the handle to show up correctly in the normal map?

http://imgur.com/a/cLGxz

Image 1: The "Medium"/low poly model
Image 2: The High poly
Image 3: The smart unwrap
Image 4: Had to create new image off the smart unwrap to get the bake to even work
Image 5: The normal map
Image 6: A closeup of the weird artifacts I get where the handle bumps should be


Some caveats.

1: I'm really new to 3d modeling etc
2: I know my UV unwrap is terrible, this is the default unwrap just to see if I can complete a model with all the maps (normal, AO, diff, spec, etc)
3: My end goal is to get this into UE4.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Zuorion

You should use cage model.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Baking#Cages

and Xnormal is better for baking

Zwebbie

It's a bit hard to see what the bumps in the handle should look like just from the wireframe. But the issue might be the Bias value in the baking menu. If your rays encounter multiple faces, it picks which one to use the normal from by checking whichever's distance is closest to the Bias value. If you leave it really low, it will prefer the base shape over your floating detail. (At least if I remember all of this correctly)

SkyWay

Post your bake settings inside Blender, but my guess is your raycast is too shallow and it's causing those artifacts or that you're baking into 8bits instead of 16bits... Try baking with Cycles instead of the Blender Render too, see if that helps. You really don't have to use a cage for a model like this in my honest opinion (but what do I know, I use averaged normals for everything). EDIT: and what Zwebbie said.

Here are two threads that you should read through if you haven't already http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=107196
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81154

And lastly, if your destination is UE4 don't aim for what I assume you're doing, aka the "old" diffuse, specular and gloss system. Learn the PBR way of doing things. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=136390

Hope this helps in some way.

JedTheKrampus

You need to mess with distance and bias. Probably your bias is too low. If it's the default .001 try setting it .01 and rebake, or .1 and rebake.

Valitri

Thanks for the responses.

I tried the entire range of bias and it didn't seem to make a difference.

I ended up uses cages and switching to the Cycles renderer. It worked, not great but at least it worked.

I'm really looking into the PBR method now. Theres a ton of reading there, thanks for the very detailed links.