normal map baking problem

hassansheded

the normal map bakes perfectly fine except for this area that has these weird artifacts, the problem is solved by adding a couple of edge loops around this cut out, but i don't understand why, can someone explain what is happening?

Kanni3d

Skewing.

Adding those loops introduced some vertices along the problematic areas, which is now causing the rays/cage to project outwards in a perpendicular fashion to the detail.

Not the best solution, as you're adding a bunch of geometry whereas you can simply use something like skew painting in marmoset to alleviate most of this. But it works.

gnoop

1. For such a thing you don't need hi-poly to low-poly bake.   Would be sufficient to bake rounding corners shader only and then paint all extra details in SubstancePainter.

2.Those artifacts  are because of long triangles on probably not  100% co-planar area  .  Bet they are on your low poly  itself  too.  Check it  by applying some metallic shiny material .       It's possible to make it look right without extra loops but just fixing vertex normals .  Make them "explicit"  green and project/transfer from  other "perfect"  surface.  

But it's depends on your pipeline .  Explicit normals  often prevent further editing  and easy to break accidentally . Your customer may want the shading be "smoothing groups" only  where you do need to make those extra edge loops.   Usually it's either smoothing groups or explicit edited normals.   The later allows you to save on polycount although .