My normal maps are blurry (and a mess)

dafuu

Hi there, first time posting here and i have a question regarding normal maps.
Ive just been trying to create a good normal map for an easy cylinder with an extruded ring
around it, and the final normal map is a joke. Im using Maya 2018 for the mesh and xnormals for baking



It looks really bad, so i thought i should ask here for advice. This is the method ive tried:

1. Creating a somewhat high polycylinder, with both some bevels and also a "smooth" mesh.
2. Creating a low poly from the highpoly, removing the smooth mesh (i just wanna learn the basic, i know my low poly isnt all that low)
3. Uv the low poly, (and tried to try different solutions for hard/smooth edges, on both the the low and the high poly.
4. Creating a cage from the low poly, using the normals in maya to "inflate" the cage so it covers the low poly
5. Taking all this stuff into xnormals.
6. Baked


I think i must have missed something...

ZacD

http://polycount.com/discussion/81154/understanding-averaged-normals-and-ray-projection-who-put-waviness-in-my-normal-map/p1

dafuu

ZacD said:

http://polycount.com/discussion/81154/understanding-averaged-normals-and-ray-projection-who-put-waviness-in-my-normal-map/p1

Yes that is some good advices in that thread, but are you sure that the blurry(ness) in my normal is a result from waviness and nothing else?

ZacD

Yes.

dafuu

one more thing, is there anything you can do in maya 2018 to look at the normal maps so they look nice? Even models with good normal maps looks a bit weird in my Maya, maybe its smarter to watch it in another program?

ZacD

Maya has their own tangent bias that isn't synced with other normal map baking software. 

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_Map_Technical_Details

Here's a decent video demonstrating how you can get decent normal maps within Maya while still using xNormal, requires another program though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpPQXvaSft8

dafuu

ZacD said:

Maya has their own tangent bias that isn't synced with other normal map baking software. 

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_Map_Technical_Details

Here's a decent video demonstrating how you can get decent normal maps within Maya while still using xNormal, requires another program though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpPQXvaSft8

Thank you! You saved my from hours of frustration, because nothing actually worked after importing normal maps from xnormal into maya again. With marmoset, it looks much much better