Painter - problem with baking multiple hi-polys on single lowpoly
polycounter lvl 8
Hi!
While working on this project, I've encountered a weird problem: some of my bakes, where mutiple high-polys were baked into single lowpoly with a single UV, had nasty white seams where two highpolys intersect. I checked and double-cheked - there aren't any gaps between high-polys. They overlap. The weirdest thing, was that individual maps (normal, Id, etc) looked fine. All maps combined into material - white seam.
Lowpoly is solid, no gaps. But, UV seam and hard edge are going exactly along that line.
I'm baking with cage, match by mesh name, ray distance is standard. I have multiple models built like that with some proportion variations, and some are baking with this seam, and some without. Can't see any pattern of this problem. It just happens.
There is another similar problem with baking another model. This one repeats itself not only in Painter, but in xNormal too, so that means, there is a problem in the meshes, but I can't find anything wrong with it.
Problem reveals itself as some stray lines, crossing some of the model details.
I could speculate, on what the problem is - maybe it's vertical polygon on lowpoly. But it's not that simple. First, it's needed for correct shape (flat surface bridging sides of the knife would not bake properly whatever ray distance I set, and slope from knife side to the blade will look even weirder), and second, this line on normal map goes only so far, it fades towards the back end of the knife!
Baked normal:
Material view:
High-poly:
Lowpoly:
While working on this project, I've encountered a weird problem: some of my bakes, where mutiple high-polys were baked into single lowpoly with a single UV, had nasty white seams where two highpolys intersect. I checked and double-cheked - there aren't any gaps between high-polys. They overlap. The weirdest thing, was that individual maps (normal, Id, etc) looked fine. All maps combined into material - white seam.
Lowpoly is solid, no gaps. But, UV seam and hard edge are going exactly along that line.
I'm baking with cage, match by mesh name, ray distance is standard. I have multiple models built like that with some proportion variations, and some are baking with this seam, and some without. Can't see any pattern of this problem. It just happens.
There is another similar problem with baking another model. This one repeats itself not only in Painter, but in xNormal too, so that means, there is a problem in the meshes, but I can't find anything wrong with it.
Problem reveals itself as some stray lines, crossing some of the model details.
I could speculate, on what the problem is - maybe it's vertical polygon on lowpoly. But it's not that simple. First, it's needed for correct shape (flat surface bridging sides of the knife would not bake properly whatever ray distance I set, and slope from knife side to the blade will look even weirder), and second, this line on normal map goes only so far, it fades towards the back end of the knife!
Baked normal:
Material view:
High-poly:
Lowpoly:
Replies
As for your lines on the bake, try tessellating that huge flat polygon on the high poly, there may be some lone vertex somewhere messing up the normal.
I see it now. I forgot to map additional Id color for metal part of this black-orange handle, and now it's shining through.
Thanks for the good advices!
Still, with knife it's not that simple. Subdividing this huge polygon on hi-poly didn't help. Adding some cuts on lowpoly didn't help either. It actually extended this weird line a bit further. Another strange thing. Normal map looks okay. There is nothing unusual going on in this spot. Yet any material reacts to this with this strange thick line, that looks like zero roughness, or something.