Baking perfect Synced Normals without chamfers?

micropolius

Hi polycount.
So far I haven't had much problems with synced normal workflow until this mesh.




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This is substance painter 2 Bake without chamfers, using synced normal map workflow (MikkTspace) 
Triangulated - No-chamfers around edge perimeters - single smoothing group --- This usually results in alot of artifacts. 



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I know you can fix these issues by applying a chamfer around the edge-perimeter. This will result in a good bake with synced workflow. For this particular mesh I want to keep the mesh as low as possible.

I've seen artists getting really nice bakes without chamfers. How do you guys do it?

Bek

hard edges at uv seams. figure out why they're good (there's a thread right here in tech talk) and use them.

also unrelated to your problem but try and avoid long thin triangles, they're bad for performance (you can read up on that) annnd can easily cause problems when texturing, especially when the islands aren't adequately relaxed

micropolius

Bek said:

hard edges at uv seams. figure out why they're good (there's a thread right here in tech talk) and use them.

also unrelated to your problem but try and avoid long thin triangles, they're bad for performance (you can read up on that) annnd can easily cause problems when texturing, especially when the islands aren't adequately relaxed

Thanks the suggestion. Now I am aware that you CAN use hard edges with synced normal workflow.
You saved the day. Thanks alot!

musashidan

micropolius said:

 Thanks the suggestion. Now I am aware that you CAN use hard edges with synced normal workflow.

A 'synced' workflow just means that the baker/renderer are using the same tangent basis. It's an averaged(cageless) bake that doesn't require uv/smoothing splits. A caveat, however, is that sometimes the gradients caused by the single smoothing group result in mipping artifacts. Also, as usual,  skewing occurs (not a problem when combined with SDesigner or Toolbag 3 ability to paint out skewing)

ZacD

Using a single smoothing group is horrible for things like guns or assets with lots of ~90 degree angles. Basically if you see any extreme shading on the lowpoly with a single smoothing group, then it's a bad idea. 

micropolius

musashidan said:

micropolius said:

 Thanks the suggestion. Now I am aware that you CAN use hard edges with synced normal workflow.

A 'synced' workflow just means that the baker/renderer are using the same tangent basis. It's an averaged(cageless) bake that doesn't require uv/smoothing splits. A caveat, however, is that sometimes the gradients caused by the single smoothing group result in mipping artifacts. Also, as usual,  skewing occurs (not a problem when combined with SDesigner or Toolbag 3 ability to paint out skewing)

I am grateful for this pro-tip.   Toolbag Paint offset + Paint skew... tremendously awesome!