Why does my imported Fbx look like it hasn't been smoothed?

Jpmiranda

So I'm making a scene in Unreal but this one import is giving me a lot of trouble, It looks like this in the engine:



As you can see the topology is very clear even through the material. When it's supposed to look like this (substance designer)



I'm unsure what I'm doing wrong since I was able to import every other mesh in the scene without much trouble, the only difference I can think of between this mesh and all the others in the scene is that I used decimation master in z-brush on this mesh while the other ones I just z remeshed. 

either way here's Mayas fbx export settings I used, also the history of the object was cleared and the edges were all softened:



Ive also posted on the UE4 answers hub but I'd thought I should ask here too. Any help or suggestions are appreciated!

Vailias

I'm assuming there's a normal map on that in engine? 
If so, did you rebake the map after softening the edges ( which smooths your vertex normals) on export?

Jpmiranda

Hey Vailias, thanks for responding!

Yes there is a normal map applied to the in engine mesh.

My original normal map was baked in substance designer with a mesh that had softened edges already and it looked fine in substance designer as you can see above.

My normal map looks like this btw:


Are you recommending I rebake this map again?

McGreed

Did you import the same fbx to substance and unreal? and try invert the normal maps green channel/y in unreal, see if that help, I had a problem like this with xnormal because green was inverted compared to unreal, but was fixed by changing settings.

Jpmiranda

Hello Mcgreed, thanks for responding!

The same fbx is used in substance as unreal. I flipped the normal maps green channel and there was no change unfortunately as you can see: 

Thanks for the suggestion though

Vailias

A few suggestions: 
1: Make sure the settings in Substance designer are set as noted here https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/display/SPDOC/Project+configuration
Make sure the "compute tangent space per fragment" is checked and that your normal map tangent basis settings are set to MIKKTspace.
Rebake the normal map with those settings and try it in Unreal again. 
if that doesn't work:

2: reexport your model from maya, check the "include tangents and binormals" box. 
Rebake the maps with this newly exported model. be sure the settings above are set. 
Import to unreal and be sure to preserve the tangents and binormals on import (import normals and tangents setting in the normal import method dropdown of the mesh import options dialogue box) https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Content/FBX/ImportOptions/index.html

Sorry you're having such trouble. Its often some tiny thing that trips up the whole works.

ZacD

Are those creases along the edges of polygons? Do they show up without the normal map applied?