Normals will not bake
polycounter lvl 4
Hi, folks! So I hit a snag getting the normal maps for a model to come through when I baked the low/high poly in Substance Painter. At first, Some parts of the model had got them, some didn't. I've tried renaming the parts so that naming conventions match up, doesn't fix it. (side note: I usually model in Maya, then import into Zbrush to get the high poly version.)
So reworked the model a bit, and now none of the normals are being baked through (as you can see in the first image, in the little menu for all the normals, they are all black.)
Could it possibly have something to do with the UVs? I ran the low poly model through UV Layout and did a quick operation, leaving it more broken up than what I would have done on my own. It's also in one UV group, which I have seen a lot of in my recent research. I recall when I worked on a similar asset, I had UV's for each piece individually (blade, pommel, handle, ect.), and I had no problems. I also had assigned each piece with it's own material in Maya (generic Blinn 1, 2, 3, etc) - see the final image I've attached for an example of what I laid out. it's not the finished one, just an example of what I'm doing.
the second image I have uploaded is from the original asset I had created. Each part of the axe was still assigned it's own material going into Painter(from Maya). The difference was that all the UVs were created in UV Layout as one group, then brought back into Maya, then exported as an FBX. Previously, I had outputted each piece directly, made their UVs, then re-imported back to Maya, then off to Painter.
I thought making one UV group would help speed things up, so either I misunderstood how that is done, how one UV groups are used, or just have to settle for each part having to be on it's own. Shoudl I be using a cage or something for using one UV groups? Clearly, I'm at a lost and could use some assistance :-)
Thanks in advance!
So reworked the model a bit, and now none of the normals are being baked through (as you can see in the first image, in the little menu for all the normals, they are all black.)
Could it possibly have something to do with the UVs? I ran the low poly model through UV Layout and did a quick operation, leaving it more broken up than what I would have done on my own. It's also in one UV group, which I have seen a lot of in my recent research. I recall when I worked on a similar asset, I had UV's for each piece individually (blade, pommel, handle, ect.), and I had no problems. I also had assigned each piece with it's own material in Maya (generic Blinn 1, 2, 3, etc) - see the final image I've attached for an example of what I laid out. it's not the finished one, just an example of what I'm doing.
the second image I have uploaded is from the original asset I had created. Each part of the axe was still assigned it's own material going into Painter(from Maya). The difference was that all the UVs were created in UV Layout as one group, then brought back into Maya, then exported as an FBX. Previously, I had outputted each piece directly, made their UVs, then re-imported back to Maya, then off to Painter.
I thought making one UV group would help speed things up, so either I misunderstood how that is done, how one UV groups are used, or just have to settle for each part having to be on it's own. Shoudl I be using a cage or something for using one UV groups? Clearly, I'm at a lost and could use some assistance :-)
Thanks in advance!
Replies
It's more likely a model scale, or naming convention issue (if you're using name matching). Is your high poly mesh being exported from ZBrush and imported directly to Substance Painter? If you are bringing you high poly from ZBrush, you'll need to un-check the "export sub groups" button under the export tab, or the model won't bake properly.