Substance Painter for Film? Managing normal seams?

3D4Eva

I'm not sure if this is just a Painter problem but I have a piece for a film of a character and because it is for film the there are many uv cuts on the face to get better resolution. There are visible seams where the cuts are that you can see when the camera is up close. When I texture it isn't a problem from the diffuse as I use triplanar and the clone tool when I need, but those normal map seams are a problem.

This is the part with a solid color and no texturing just to show the seams.





The bakes are also fine and I don't have any problems. For this project I cannot just hide seams because this is a film piece and I'm using almost 30 tiles for the face alone. I don't have any issues with the diffuse or anything like that, only the normal seams showing like this.

I have not tried Mari but is it the same with the seams? How do people in film deal with this as the camera will be up closer. From a distance you might not even see the seams.

I cannot share more due to NDA But this is a problem I can replicate even with a sphere cutting up several times and baking down to a low poly version from a high res sphere.

The clone tool wont remove these.

EDIT ---

I looked at this some more and I was mistaken, it is caused by the cuts only and not the bake because I can load in the low poly without baking and those seams are there. Same happens for spheres. I'm not use to working with udims sadly... so is this avoidable?

 

I'm going to try Mari and see if it is still an issue.

EDIT 2

Yes I can see seams when painting on the low in Mari as well. Not sure if this is normal I did a quick render and they show as well. So I'm not sure how people do any of this because I cannot hide my cuts due to the resolution needed.

EDIT 3

I did a test by making my two uv islands where the seam is be orientated the same and straight as possible, but I still get the seam look no matter what I do. I'm out of ideas at this point.

3D4Eva

I talked to my mentor and he told me that these seams are impossible to remove from view and the best I can do is blend materials above it and avoid having a flat surface there, or a change in depth that goes along either side the seam.

Since this is on the low poly and not after baking I guess this is a normal thing when dealing with udims and vfx film stuff? I cannot hide the seams due to the nature of the project and how many tiles are for the face.