!NEED HELP! NormalMap Problems(AlwaysFun)

Ckafee

Hello:)

I have been modeling for quite some time now and baking aswell but i never seem te get it right. There probably is a ton of research but nothing i havent seen yet. So i thought maybe the strong community of polycount can help me on my path to the perfect bake! Lets get Fanatic!

model

I have added a Sketchfab model with high glossiness so its real obvious where the problems lay. For some reason all over the blankparts there are flakes i cant seem to get that. And here and there i have artefacts.

https://gyazo.com/3232efb22e824a8b23aea25ca124881f

https://gyazo.com/de4cb534efb92bca3b4c378a32e6814e

https://gyazo.com/a4dc2f40c0e810a413f494a846df2c78

https://gyazo.com/bac7f22a73ad412bd4a0b601cd946330

Here are some screenshots.

The normal map is 8k with 4x4 anti-all.

Hope to here from you soon and thanks for passing by!

Kind regards,

Jochem

Kanni3d

Whats your highpoly/source mesh look like? Looks a bit like some noise from bad/weird tesselation

Ghogiel

I can see your mesh isn't triangulated. I have no idea if the triangulation is the same in sketchfab as the triangulation  was when you baked the mesh. Most apps don't really know what a polygon is and make up their own triangulation rules. So you have to spoon feed them explicitly triangulated meshes or they cannot agree on what a polygon actually is.

there is quite a lot of compression banding, make sure your normal is baked at 16bit.

Ckafee

Kanni3d said:

Whats your highpoly/source mesh look like? Looks a bit like some noise from bad/weird tesselation

https://gyazo.com/fbd91e272c77e6160edab31f82b3b162
Assuming that the waeven part doesnt cause the issie this is the HP

Ckafee

Ghogiel said:

I can see your mesh isn't triangulated. I have no idea if the triangulation is the same in sketchfab as the triangulation  was when you baked the mesh. Most apps don't really know what a polygon is and make up their own triangulation rules. So you have to spoon feed them explicitly triangulated meshes or they cannot agree on what a polygon actually is.

there is quite a lot of compression banding, make sure your normal is baked at 16bit.

Allright, so i will triangulate everything. but the not trianglutaded mesh would cause different issues then the compressed normal map right? And where can i set the bit count for my baked maps in XNormal or Substance painter? https://gyazo.com/38e7351a75981c1991ba75278e9aca46

Ckafee

Ghogiel said:

I can see your mesh isn't triangulated. I have no idea if the triangulation is the same in sketchfab as the triangulation  was when you baked the mesh. Most apps don't really know what a polygon is and make up their own triangulation rules. So you have to spoon feed them explicitly triangulated meshes or they cannot agree on what a polygon actually is.

there is quite a lot of compression banding, make sure your normal is baked at 16bit.

I Also looked up the depth rate in my image properties in windows and it says 32 bit but i dont know if thats just depth density or the calculated bit rate https://gyazo.com/db3a232568eac25b73bc659820ace70a

Kanni3d

HP looks fine, doesn't seem to be the culprit

the not trianglutaded mesh would cause different issues then the compressed normal map right?

Correct - have your mesh triangulated from your dcc -> baker ->target engine always.

Been a while since I baked from xnormal, but 32bit is overkill and has diminishing returns - should have similar results to 16bit. See what your results look like after baking with your triangulated mesh and using that same triangulated mesh in your renderer.

Ckafee

Kanni3d said:

HP looks fine, doesn't seem to be the culprit

the not trianglutaded mesh would cause different issues then the compressed normal map right?

Correct - have your mesh triangulated from your dcc -> baker ->target engine always.

Been a while since I baked from xnormal, but 32bit is overkill and has diminishing returns - should have similar results to 16bit. See what your results look like after baking with your triangulated mesh and using that same triangulated mesh in your renderer.

Hey First of all, Thank you for helping me out and thinking along. Sometimes an extra set of brains can make the difference!

Yes i have tried that here a screenshot of the results. https://gyazo.com/08b07376ff02f0765bb734b55e0004e1

All meshes are triangulated. I do see different issues according the triangulation shading, but i will fix that after the "compression" Issue.

I have tried baking in substance painter and XNormal but found that Xnormal did a little bit better job. But the results are quite the same.
Side note i like how to weaving turned out in my bake. I just really dont get the weird shading when everything is smooth..

Ghogiel

To bake 16bit in xnormal iirc I used tif. Can't remember the set up exactly to make sure it's 16bit.

Substance should default the mesh map normal channel to RGB16F, which is 16bit per channel.

When you check details of a 16bit RGB, the details shows you total bit depth by adding all the floats together. ie a 16bit RGB texture should display 48bits, I suspect you have 8bit RGBA texture there hence why it's displaying 32bit total.

but since you tried both, you should be getting a 16bit normal bake for sure in substance. so I am not sure whats the issue tbh. 

seb3d

while higher res bakes and more bit depth can help with parts of your problem i have to say your uv layout shows a lot of wasted space and to be honest your low poly as far as i can tell from the sketch fab looks very bumpy. cant say much about the highpoly from the wireframe screenshot but the low poly geo for sure could need some work so the normal map has less compensation work to do.

Ckafee

seb3d said:

while higher res bakes and more bit depth can help with parts of your problem i have to say your uv layout shows a lot of wasted space and to be honest your low poly as far as i can tell from the sketch fab looks very bumpy. cant say much about the highpoly from the wireframe screenshot but the low poly geo for sure could need some work so the normal map has less compensation work to do.

In what way do you mean work? As in more geo. And would that fix the problem do you think?

seb3d

not necessarily more geo. but better and cleaner distribution. i picked an extreme example which is pretty obvious in the sketchfab viewer.

assuming that blue is somewhat what i think your hp looks in that area and (depending on triangulation) green is your low, your normal tries to compensate for the difference. i think similar areas can be found in other areas of the mesh. so yes your bake would benefit of high and low both being clean geo and matching more closely were they easily can.

Ckafee

seb3d said:

not necessarily more geo. but better and cleaner distribution. i picked an extreme example which is pretty obvious in the sketchfab viewer.

assuming that blue is somewhat what i think your hp looks in that area and (depending on triangulation) green is your low, your normal tries to compensate for the difference. i think similar areas can be found in other areas of the mesh. so yes your bake would benefit of high and low both being clean geo and matching more closely were they easily can.

Chears thank you! ill get to work right away!