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Baked high to low normal map has seams in Arnold CPU render on all hard edges.

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malcolm polycount sponsor

Hi, I'd like to render my baked normal map in Arnold CPU, does anyone know how to get rid of all these seams? Scene file here if you want to take a look https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-shading-lighting-and/arnold-cpu-tangent-space-normal-map-has-seams-on-all-hard-edges/td-p/10840311




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  • oglu
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    oglu polycount lvl 666

    First thing to mention Arnold is bad rendering lowpoly with normalmap. Its made to render highpoly with detail normalmaps on top.


    I got the best results if i use the Arnold image node and flipped channels.


    I assume Arnold does use the same tangent space in all DDCs. It doesnt know how to deal with the tangent weighting in Maya.


    There are several bugs filled with normalmap issues.


    https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/plugins/servlet/mobile?contentId=55709908#content/view/55709908

  • oglu
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    oglu polycount lvl 666

    There is a tutorial out there to make it work with normalmaps from substance painter. But its a bit complicated. You have to use a world space normalmap from the lowpoly to get the synced normalspace and the baked normalmap on top.

  • malcolm
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    malcolm polycount sponsor

    I've followed the tutorial on the shader setup, but the issue persists. Could you point me to the tutorial about using object space + tangent space.

    Last time I met with Autodesk they actually fixed my Arnold bug with tangent space normal maps not rendering correctly unless you freeze transform, at the time he said Solid Angle was keen to make their stuff work with game assets, but I don't have that Autodesk contact anymore.

  • walter
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    walter polycounter lvl 14

    I am also curious to know this tutorial to correctly render normal-maps.

    Arnold is my renderer of choice and i'm frustrated that we can't properly render game assets.

  • malcolm
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    malcolm polycount sponsor

    I've searched for two weeks now and came up with nothing, it appears to be a limitation/bug of the Arnold normal map shader everyone is having this same problem on the Arnold forum and a bunch of other forums. It looks like soft edges work which is good for Zbrush models and characters, but for environment stuff I think we're out of luck.

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