Faceted Edges Baked in Normals

polypusha

Can't recall how to resolve this situation. Faceted edges are showing up in normals bake. Solution?

Synaesthesia

Are you using FBX instead of OBJ?

polypusha

Synaesthesia, the object is a primitive modeled in 3DS Max. Baked normals from high poly and when assigning material with normals to low poly I receive these faceted edges.

Obscura

How does the lowpoly mesh looks without the normal map applied? Is it smoothed?

Zack Maxwell

I think @Obscura has it; my guess is you need to fully smooth the surface normals on the lowpoly. No hard edges.

Obscura

Grimwolf said:

I think @Obscura has it; my guess is you need to fully smooth the surface normals on the lowpoly. No hard edges.

Well. On this mesh, maybe, but having hard edges at strong angle changes in general should only improve the quality of the baked normal map. 

Synaesthesia

Right, sorry - had a brain fart there and spaced out thinking it was another tool. Have you considered trying to use xNormal or HandPlane to bake instead?

polypusha

AObscuraGrimwolf, thank you for the suggestions. I wasn't aware that the low poly had to be smoothed. Which would you suggest: T-Smooth modifier or smoothing groups?

Obscura

smoothing groups

polypusha

Synaesthesia, No problem. Brain farts happen to me, too. Also, just last night, I was just thinking about using a different package to bake normals and downloaded and installed XNormal.

polypusha

AObscura, Thanks! I'll definitely give it a try. 

polypusha

AObscuraGrimwolf, thank you for the suggestions. I wasn't aware that the low poly had to be smoothed, too. Which would you recommend: T-Smooth modifier or smoothing groups?

polypusha

AObscuraGrimwolf, thank you for the suggestions. I wasn't aware that the low poly had to be smoothed, too. Which would you recommend: T-Smooth modifier or smoothing groups?