Please help, going crazy with this, substance normal problem.

Raiwen

Hi! I'm having issue with normal map or normals on the object, I can't figure out which one.

This is in Substance Painter:


This is in Substance Painter when I make a new file and re import the maps on an object with sharp edges, with a single smoothing group it looks fine, but doesn't look good in Unity.

This is how it looks in Unity, the left one is on a completely smooth object, the right one is on a model with sharp edges.



I get these weird artifacts. I tried rebaking everything multiple times, messing with normals and smoothing groups and nothing seems to work. I made multiple other assets in the exact same way and all of them work good. Please help.   

sprunghunt

Somewhere in the process there are mismatched normals between the lowpoly and the normal map. Here's some things to check: 

When you are exporting textures from substance painter are you using the unity preset? 
What are your export settings for the FBX that you're importing into unity and using in substance painter? 
Are you using the standard shader?
Is your normal map in unity actually set to be a normal map?
What are the settings on the normal map in unity? 
Are you using a cage to bake the normal map? 
What does your lowpoly look like without the normal map applied? 

Raiwen

Thank you for the answer.

Yes I used a Unity preset both when creating the Substance project and on export.
I tried multiple settings, I exported the file from 3DS Max, Maya and Blender and nothing made a difference. I'll look into it a bit more. Might have missed something there.
I'm using the Universal Render Pipeline/Lit Shader.
Yes the normal map is set to be the normal map.
Normal map settings:

No I didn't use the cage.
Without and with the normal map.

sprunghunt

if you change the smoothing groups you always need to re-bake the normal map in substance painter - that's why the normal map looks broken on the right image. But the image on the left looks close to correct. 

What are the FBX export settings you're using from maya/max/blender? 
What are the settings you're using to import into unity? 
https://docs.unity3d.com/560/Documentation/Manual/HOWTO-importObject.html

I personally prefer to export, and import, the binormals/tangents from maya to unity.  This does require the right settings to be set on the export and import as well as a correct bake from substance painter. If you can show me what you've got it'll help. 

Obscura

The left one on the last image is because of flipped triangulation. Also how does the uvs look like?

Raiwen

So after importing the low poly into maya, exporting it with these settings and rebaking again:

and with these normal map settings in unity:

I got this:


So sprunghunt thank you very very much! You led me to the right way towards fixing this. It was agony for couple of hours

The only issue I have left, but this is going to be so small it shouldn't be visible is a bit of waviness on the inner side of the edge. It might be because of triangulation. 



P.S. @Obscura these are the UVs



Thanks once again! ^^

sprunghunt

Raiwen said:

So after importing the low poly into maya, exporting it with these settings and rebaking again:

and with these normal map settings in unity:

I got this:


So sprunghunt thank you very very much! You led me to the right way towards fixing this. It was agony for couple of hours

The only issue I have left, but this is going to be so small it shouldn't be visible is a bit of waviness on the inner side of the edge. It might be because of triangulation. 



P.S. @Obscura these are the UVs



Thanks once again! ^^

I personally do not like using the FBX auto-triangulation. I've found it to be unpredictable when it comes to normals or vertex color.