Need help with UV and High Poly Baking

Kainkun

Hi, I'm not sure exactly what to show but I've been having a few baking problems and I'm not sure what's causing them or how to fix them. One problem is the artifacts that seem to come from two objects that are too close. Another problem is a weird round thing showing up even though it should be completely flat. And the other one (the bottom one) I can't describe.
Anything would help, Thanks

MrJar0

Hey.
https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/spdoc/matching-by-name-127074308.html
This should solve the overlapping problems.
Set your bake distance right. Don't forget antialiasing.Some of the UV islands are too small. Most of the rings/square strips can be a straight line.
Bake only the normal map first. See if you still get artifacts.
Might want to rethink the size of some of the islands. Depending on from what angle you will see the prop most of the time.

Hopefully this helped
Good luck

Kainkun

Thanks, I have it all as one object. so that's a bad idea and I should keep them as separate pieces?
Is the bake distance the Max Frontal and Rear Distance? If so how do I know what to set that to?
What's wrong with small UVs? I want to keep the correct pixel density.
Wouldnt making the rings and squares straight make deformation?
Thanks again

akiratang

What alot ppl use to do is exploding bake.
You separate the mesh into parts for a cleaner bake, if some parts are too close to one another they may bake onto something you dont want. If you dont want to explode your mesh then using substance painter Match by mesh name is the way to go.

Small UVs are bad as it wont have much resolution to work with and may look blurry and bake incorrectly. 

Kainkun

Okay, Thanks

Kainkun

I separated the mesh by name and baked only UV, which solved a lot of problems but I'm still getting the weird roundness at the top. Any idea what's going on? I feel like its related to phong angles or soft/hard angles but I think its all supposed to be soft to bake correctly 

Shrike

make sure to have your smoothing groups in mind, right now those normals are extremely bent because you strap them over a lot of convex surface area without splitting, try set more smoothing groups / splits for the top thing (and keep in mind that smoothing splits also have to be UV splits else the normals will have seams)


that black line is the terminator shadow, showing a curved surface. 3DS is extremely bad at displaying that so you need to be careful 

Kainkun

Thanks, I don't use 3DS and I'm not too sure exactly what you mean but does that mean not everything should be equally smoothed? and I should make it not smooth on some edges that are also the edges of UV islands?

Shrike

you can have different smoothing on individual parts and you should. 90° angles usually should have a cut

If you are more experienced later you can have larger smoothed areas as this saves vertices and makes textures have less seams but to start try do more cuts until you understand it better 

You want your UV islands to be according to your seams, so just make your smoothing first and then adjust the UV accordingly

Kainkun

Thanks, most of my problems have been solved but I still have some artifacts, any help is appreciated. It might just be something I to need to practice more.

HixaLupa

Are you using maya? Which program are you baking in? and do those final artefacts in the normal show up on the 'blank' white mode?

Kainkun

I modeled in Cinema 4D and Maya. I baked in Substance Painter. It does show in white mode

Shrike

First 2 images are most likely smoothing errors,
the second 2 no idea, maybe UV issues
Bottom left should be split apart for the bake, and bottom right is likely a cage thing, maybe larger cage size or you have something overlapping double there, like a hidden mesh inside

Btw here is my C4D modeling palette, it has basically all the modeling functions in one place, really makes things a lot easier imo

https://hostr.co/3iwsQJFHXvkq

Kainkun

Sorry but I'm not too sure what you mean. All the parts are separate pieces. And I didn't use a cage file I used match by mesh name. I don't see anything hidden inside.
Thanks for the palette