Issue with Normal bake, please help

JVentura1

I'm having an issue with normal map bake, and I've exhausted all options I can think of. This pinch and seam on a simple flat surface will not go away. I have baked this in Marmoset, Painter, and xNormal with every setting possible, with and without a cage. Hard edges, soft edges. Object space and world space normal maps don't show this pinch, but when converted to tangent space with xNormal it comes back. Can't find anything funny about the mesh or its normals. The rest of the object bakes perfectly fine, seems like simple enough geometry but I've just about had it with this... Any help is greatly appreciated, please do make me look stupid with a simple issue I missed! Here's a link with the high and low poly meshes...

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Pt9zMD4BAdfkpKJ4oIV0v7d7roIZG8B0

 The last image is object space/tangent space conversion...

slosh

Wow, I tested your files out and I have no clue how to fix that while keeping ur current mesh.  BUT, I did find an easy fix.  Just recreate those polys.  I just deleted those faces, re appended new polys, UVed, and it baked clean.

JVentura1

ok interesting, Thanks!

Alex_J

Slosh's fix is something I've come to rely on when I have a similar issue. Sometimes there's just something corrupted in there, and it's easiest to just delete it out. A mesh cleanup operation may help as well. 

Principle is, if there is a dumb, easy solution, try that first before going into hardcore troubleshooter mode.

Udjani

I got similiar artifacts a while ago when using custom normals.