NEED HELP with normal map baking
polycounter lvl 6
Hi all!
I need some help figuring out what exactly is going on with the baking normal process for this piano I modeled a while ago. For some reason I cannot get the details that I sculpted in Zbrush to bake on to my low poly mesh from my high poly mesh. I only sculpted a little bit to ensure that it would bake correctly, before I sculpt the rest of the detail on to it.
Here's what it has looked like when I baked it before:
After receiving some feedback/help about it, then I tried the following methods to try and solve this issue:
-Rename all my low poly and high poly mesh pieces to match, with only the words "low_poly" and "high_poly" at the end
-Freeze the low poly mesh transformations
-Encased the high poly into the low poly mesh, and then I did the second bullet point that I mentioned
-Exported both the low poly and high poly meshes, with all the piano pieces, as separate FBX files, and even OBJ files too
-Export one piece as both a low and high, as an FBX file
Even after all of that, I still get either the above result, or this result:
At this rate, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I even have set the settings in Substance Painter for baking maps on "Match" to both "Always" and "By Mesh Name", and I have even messed with the Max Frontal and Rear Distances as well.
I'm not sure if it has anything to do with my UV setup, however I did try to set some of the UV's overlapping with each other into a different UV space, as such displayed here:
The test result from the high poly that I desire is this:
Again, I'm not done sculpting all of the detail I want into the piano yet, but I'm just testing this out to ensure that I can bake the detail into the low poly mesh from the high poly mesh first.
Sorry for the long amount of information, but I'd figured it be best to lay it all out there to explain what I have been struggling with. I really want to figure what is causing this issue, so that way I can finish this prop, and finally move on to a new prop.
Any help with solving/fixing this issue would be greatly appreciated, thank you!
I need some help figuring out what exactly is going on with the baking normal process for this piano I modeled a while ago. For some reason I cannot get the details that I sculpted in Zbrush to bake on to my low poly mesh from my high poly mesh. I only sculpted a little bit to ensure that it would bake correctly, before I sculpt the rest of the detail on to it.
Here's what it has looked like when I baked it before:
After receiving some feedback/help about it, then I tried the following methods to try and solve this issue:
-Rename all my low poly and high poly mesh pieces to match, with only the words "low_poly" and "high_poly" at the end
-Freeze the low poly mesh transformations
-Encased the high poly into the low poly mesh, and then I did the second bullet point that I mentioned
-Exported both the low poly and high poly meshes, with all the piano pieces, as separate FBX files, and even OBJ files too
-Export one piece as both a low and high, as an FBX file
Even after all of that, I still get either the above result, or this result:
At this rate, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I even have set the settings in Substance Painter for baking maps on "Match" to both "Always" and "By Mesh Name", and I have even messed with the Max Frontal and Rear Distances as well.
I'm not sure if it has anything to do with my UV setup, however I did try to set some of the UV's overlapping with each other into a different UV space, as such displayed here:
The test result from the high poly that I desire is this:
Again, I'm not done sculpting all of the detail I want into the piano yet, but I'm just testing this out to ensure that I can bake the detail into the low poly mesh from the high poly mesh first.
Sorry for the long amount of information, but I'd figured it be best to lay it all out there to explain what I have been struggling with. I really want to figure what is causing this issue, so that way I can finish this prop, and finally move on to a new prop.
Any help with solving/fixing this issue would be greatly appreciated, thank you!
Replies
otherwise the usual sanity checks:
- open the exported highpoly again and see if the changes you made are really there.
- export only this single piece and only the same piece from the lowpoly and only bake those
What do you mean by your first bullet point? What changes are you referring to?
I tried your second bullet point earlier today, but it still gave me the same result, or a worse result.
What I'm going to attempt to try tonight is this, separate all the different pieces into different 3D spaces, and then freeze the transformations of both the low poly and high poly meshes, and then import those into Substance Painter and see if that fixes the issue or not.
And my fist and main question still stands: How big are the changes the uvs of the piece you have sculpted are offset out of the 0-1 uv space? And you are baking from the wrong spot?
Or to say it differently: Do both parts have the same sculpted detail on it? If not, sculpt some details on the other part as well and bake again and see what happens.
Have you changed the bake settings to account for your naming convention?
Also - did you carefully read the Allegorithmic documentation on baking by name? I only ask because 9 times out of 10 when I get asked about this at work the answer is no.
For your second question, since you re-phrased it, essentially the part that has the sculpted detail on it so far, that will apply on the opposite side piece as well once it's been baked.
For your second question, I guess my answer is no to that haha. I went ahead and read it a bit more, and I'm going to try something. I read about exporting out of ZBrush, since that's where my sculpted detail is coming from, and maybe not enabling an option is causing my issues here. I'm going to go ahead and get everything ready, and try it again ASAP