Normal map baking nightmare

BreadyX

Hi guys, I have a problem that is driving me crazy. Let's start from the beginning: I am new to modelling, baking and all this stuff, but I am learning fast! So, I have modelled a gun in blender for a project of mine. I have come to the point of baking but everything I try is not working. I used both Substance Painter and xNormal, but every try has been a failure. I have tried smoothing all the mesh, making the edges hard only on the uv seams, averaged normals, hardened normals, and beveling the low poly... none of it worked. Here are some screenshots of my various attempts: 

(model are rendered in Unity 5.6)

SP non averaged

SP averaged

Bevel SP average (this are the best examples, i have many more)

I didn't screenshot the bake with the cage because the results were... underwhelming.
The bevelled is full smooth shaded, the other has hard edges at every uv seam.

My assumption is that I was too aggressive on the lowpoly completely ruining the topology, or maybe the cage is completely wrong. If so, can someone explain me how to make cages in blender?

I'll include the mesh, normals and even a little unity scene where you can walk around looking at the different models.
Models and stuff

Thank you for any kind of help!

frmdbl

There's quite a few problems with your models.

Some of your hi poly edges are way too sharp and you have wrong scale/inverted normals on one of the objects, the lowpoly UVs are very badly packed. Other than that I didn't notice any crazy mistakes.

Looks like your normal map might be flipped in the Unity. Try inverting the green channel or changing the import parameters.

musashidan

Yes, as well as being badly packed, on most of your UV shells you have zero padding. The shell borders are touching. You should have a good number of pixel padding like 16.

I would say that one of the main problems is that your high/low don't match up very well. For the cleanest bakes try to ensure a very close match in silhouette. Also, don't be afraid to add a few extra segments to curved areas and cylinders. For the sake of a few extra triangles it will greatly improve the NM bake.

BreadyX

Thank you for your replies, I'll revise the UVs and both the low and high poly then I'll try baking and hope that it'll work

musashidan

BreadyX said:

Thank you for your replies, I'll revise the UVs and both the low and high poly then I'll try baking and hope that it'll work

Oh, it'll work alright. I baked it in Toolbag having fixed the silhouette and uv problems and it was clean.