Issue with normal maps ( Maya & Zbrush )

aruena86

Hello Artists

I‘m relatively new with Maya and Zbrush, this is my first model of the Medieval House. I have a bit problem with Normal Maps of the Stones, and here is a short description of my steps in this process.

First, I modeled low poly model of the house in Maya, then separated the stones as a new mesh, did Delete History and Freeze Transformation and exported stone object as .OBJ file to Zbrush. There I divided it up to Level 4 with turned off Smt and Suv, and then from Level 4 up to Level 6 just with Smt turned on (Suv is still turned off). Additionally, with Flatten Brush I made imperfections, than exported that again (Level6 model) as .OBJ file and imported that into Maya. For Normal Maps I used Lightning/Shading-Transfer Maps - Normal map with these settings: 1024x1024, .tga as a file format, map space: Tangent, 1024x1024, Filter Size 2, Filter Type: Gaussian, Fix Texture Seams: 3, and got this map as a final result:

Also, I did AO map (rendered using Vray). But, there is a problem with these visible edges, as shown below: I don’t know why this is happening. Did I make some mistake in the process?

I would appreciate if someone can give me explanation and instruction on how to get a better result.

Also, if this is not a proper topic placement, admins please move it where it belongs.

Thank you all in advance.

throttlekitty

http://polycount.com/discussion/107196/youre-making-me-hard-making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts/p1
I'd highly suggest reading this sticky thread to understand normal maps.  ;tldr is that you need to split UVs at sharp edges and seperate the UV islands for each.

I think your workflow is overkill and could be improved by sharing UVs for many of the stones. Make 5 stones or so, UV map them, and duplicate them around your model as needed. You can get away with moving the verts around at the cost of a little stretching, but judging by your UVs, there's not a lot of large variation between similar stones.

Also, if you don't plan on sculpting and only going into zbrush for basic smoothing, you can also do this in maya with some support loops or bevels. Plus, you only have to bake those 5 or so stones. Make sense?

aruena86

Thank you for the answer.

I'll try to apply your advices on my case, and in my future work. I'm well aware that my workflow might be an overkill, due to the practical inexperience. That's why I really appreciate any hint/advice received from the community.

If I have any further questions or stumble upon some issue I'll keep posting to this thread.