Normal baking issue - Cuts in edges

arkaneXXI

Hi. I need help to solve this problem. I'll be quick.

I have these low and high poly models:


But this is the result of my baking:


As you can see, there are horrible cuts on the edges.

These are the details of the process:
1. The low and high poly model are exported in the same position.
2. I have added the suffixes _low and _high on the low and high poly mesh names respectively.
3. To solve this problem, they told me (long time ago in this forum) to separate the smoothing groups in the UV as you can see below. This method worked before but not now. If I don't do this, the problem looks worst.


4. I have also tried to add subdivisions to the low poly model. This step is used to reduce distortions on the normal map, but not needed in this model at all.


5. Also, I have used a Dilation width of 8px every 1024x1024px of texture resolution (another tip they told me in this forum long time ago). These are the settings:


That's all. I have done all that and the problem continues. I have also checked the Smoothing groups, the mesh and the export options and everything is fine. I don't know what else should I try.

poopipe

That's expected. 

If you are close enough to see the artefact you're close enough to need more geometry to represent the shape.

arkaneXXI

poopipe said:

That's expected. 

If you are close enough to see the artefact you're close enough to need more geometry to represent the shape.

Hmmm... that makes sense. So, there isn't a way to solve this without chamfering/beveling the edges of the low poly model? After all, there will always be a seam somewhere, no matter how much geometry I add.

Kanni3d

nope, normal maps can only do so much with so much resolution. Check how visible it is in your render/engine, and asses whether its worth adding more geo or not to mitigate artifacting as poopipe mentioned.

arkaneXXI

The problem was reduced a lot increasing the baking resolution from 2048x2048 to 4096x4096 with antialias in x4. Of course, it took me like 10 or 15 min to bake this and during that time my computer was very slow. Also, I have ignored the "separate the uv clusters by smoothing groups" to reduce the amount of seems and keep them in the less visible areas. I'll check if I can adjust the smoothing groups as before after the baking without having side effects.

gnoop

At close a split/hard edge  would never  look absolutely, perfectly  rounded .  In actual game the split will be even more revealing  due to shadow maps resolution  and screen space AO depending on technique used.    

You don't actually need to split every edge .   I would do normal map with lod02 in mind :

lod02:

notice how vertex normals stays in mostly same direction.   And you save on poly count  here with less splits.

Wile splitting hard edge into separate UV islands  Is a general rule for sure  you shouldn't follow every rule fanatically  IMO.   Rather follow a common sense .

It's how shading produced by vertex normals only should look like  on your model before normal map baking:

arkaneXXI

gnoop said:

You don't actually need to split every edge .   I would do normal map with lod02 in mind 

Thanks for the info. What do you mean with lod02? The only "lod" I know is "level of detail".

gnoop

arkaneXXI said:

gnoop said:

You don't actually need to split every edge .   I would do normal map with lod02 in mind 

Thanks for the info. What do you mean with lod02? The only "lod" I know is "level of detail".

It's exactly what I mean.   Look at my second picture  . It's how your post would be looking from distance , probably even without that loop  bellow.    Doing too many splits  would make you problems at lods

arkaneXXI

gnoop said:

arkaneXXI said:

gnoop said:

You don't actually need to split every edge .   I would do normal map with lod02 in mind 

Thanks for the info. What do you mean with lod02? The only "lod" I know is "level of detail".

It's exactly what I mean.   Look at my second picture  . It's how your post would be looking from distance , probably even without that loop  bellow.    Doing too many splits  would make you problems at lods

I see. I'd prefer to don't split every hard edge in the UV. And as I said before, the result doesn't look that bad on Substance Painter after using a higher resolution and antialias. Here is the result before and after these corrections:



The seam is still there, but is very soft now and not very visible so, it's not annoying to the sight at all like before. However, the problem now is outside Substance Painter. In 3ds Max the result looks horrible. I'll upload some screenshots if cannot solve it.

arkaneXXI

Ready. This is how it looks the low poly in 3ds Max without splitting the hard edges in the UV and doing the baking with a 4096x4096px resolution and antialias x4. Also, I have adjusted the normals with the Edit Normals modifier to solve the bad looking in 3ds Max. It seems the main problem there it was in the normals.

AntonB

arkaneXXI said:

gnoop said:

arkaneXXI said:

gnoop said:

You don't actually need to split every edge .   I would do normal map with lod02 in mind 

Thanks for the info. What do you mean with lod02? The only "lod" I know is "level of detail".

It's exactly what I mean.   Look at my second picture  . It's how your post would be looking from distance , probably even without that loop  bellow.    Doing too many splits  would make you problems at lods

I see. I'd prefer to don't split every hard edge in the UV. And as I said before, the result doesn't look that bad on Substance Painter after using a higher resolution and antialias. Here is the result before and after these corrections:



The seam is still there, but is very soft now and not very visible so, it's not annoying to the sight at all like before. However, the problem now is outside Substance Painter. In 3ds Max the result looks horrible. I'll upload some screenshots if cannot solve it.

So what exactly did you change? Because I am running in the same problems.