Why does low poly appear weird shadows？
Hey guys,I recently found a problem, such as this model , although its surface is flat, it still has this fake shadow on low poly mesh.Does anyone know what could be causing this? If anyone knows the answer, I'd really appreciate it if you could tell me！THX GUYS！！！
Replies
This is caused by the surface normals; the model is trying to look smooth in that area, but there are very few polygons—
You can get better looking results with the "Weighted Normals" modifier, if you have a newer version of 3ds max.
In older versions of 3ds max, I'm not sure— maybe there are plugins/scripts online.
But if I change normals on this model, will my normal changes be reset if I later export this model to other software?
it could be! now the question is, where will you use it and how?
will you use normalmaps on top? if so, they will fix this very likely.
Does this mean that a correct normal map can compensate for the flaws of the model?To be honest, when I use this model to bake a normal, it looks normal in 3DMAX. However, when I import substance painter, the defects in these models appear again Even when I import the model into marmost toolbag, it shows the defects of the model in the same way.
yes thats exactly what it means. THis is what normalmaps are there for! They do have limitiations, especially with very strong lowpoly shading and compresssion on top, but this here should be no problem.
So now we get into the territory of different tangentspaces between different apps. But Substance Painter is using MikkT as its Tangentbase, just like Unreal, Unity or Blender. Maya and 3dsmax have their own, tho it might be that in newer versions can bake MikkT, which would make it look perfect in all of these tools. If it can not, try using a different baker, say substance painter itself or marmoset toolbag, which are far more common to use these days, than actually using 3dsmax for that job.
Max now supports mikkt.