The Perfect Bake: Marmoset Toolbag vs Cylindar bakes

EJtheArtist

Is there such a thing as 'the perfect bake' when it comes to assets with cylindars? I've been modeling a hanging light fixture, which is all cylindars, and needs to be LP baked. I use Maya to Marmoset (For Bake) to Substance (For Paint) to Unreal Engine. I get things like wobbly lines, gradients, and non-perfect circles in my normal map. I know of many workflows for this, but none have worked for me. What works for you? 

FrankPolygon

Normal baking issues like this are generally caused by a combination of factors related to the layout of the geometry, hard edges and UVs. Without seeing the problem, wire frames and UVs it can be difficult to pin down which factors are at play and what the options are for resolving the issues with the model. For more specific feedback on the issues it's probably worth posting a few images of the model.

Another possible factor is mismatched tangent space / tangent basis. Ensure all applications are calculating the normal maps with the same tangent basis for a synced normal workflow. Check if Toolbag is calculating the normal bakes in Mikktspace. (The defualt is Marmoset.)

Here is some documentation from Marmoset on baking with Toolbag: https://marmoset.co/posts/toolbag-baking-tutorial/

(Click on Baking Basics and Best results near the top of the article for relevant solutions to common baking issues.)

Here is some documentation from Substance on Tangent space: https://docs.substance3d.com/bake/tangent-space-182257076.html

Some general resources for what causes these issues and how to resolve them can also be found in the threads below:

https://polycount.com/discussion/81154/understanding-averaged-normals-and-ray-projection-who-put-waviness-in-my-normal-map/p1
https://polycount.com/discussion/107196/youre-making-me-hard-making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts/p1

If mesh shading and strong normal map gradients are a problem then this YouTube video by Alec Moody is worth watching.