Weird edges when using decimated model as high poly for baking
Hello.
I am try to bake high poly to low poly. When I used original hp model everything worked as expected.
Then I decided to try the same process but with model decimated in zbrush.
And It seems that painter doesn't like it.
Is there a way of working around this?
Thank you 😄
Replies
You've decimated too much around that rim, and the high poly doesn't have enough to work with.
So it means that it's still about triangles count and not about models 'outline'? Asking because with fixed normals decimated model looks fine outside the painter 😅 It just seems like painter takes into account all particular triangles on the rims and bakes around them, ignoring normals and stuff like that. I'm trying to figure out its logic and whether it is possible to work with decimated models.
Yes It's possible, but the problem is that Zbrush doesn't display interpolated shading at all, only hard edges (as if all faces were split, or as if all edges were set to hard). Meaning that the visual result in Zbrush will be misleading if any of your later steps display the model as smooth shaded.
The first thing you'll have to figure out is wether or not your export directly out of Zbrush is hard shaded or smooth shaded. And then figure out what to do from there (smooth all, smooth according to a certain angle tolerance, and so on). Ideally you want to use a model viewer that doesn't do any conversion and just reads the OBJ/FBX as it is ; and then adjust the import settings of your baking environment accordingly.
In the first image where you write it works as expected, there are some visibly hard edges.
Best share more information (UVs?), ideally meshes, else people can only give you their best guess.
you could PBR render to preview with smooth normals.
but honestly for the best quality possible, just do not decimate. unless the meshes are ridiculously dense i would just bake with the highest geo possible, cuts out any errors that might come from decimation.
So this is important even for highpoly / decimated highpoly model?
I figured that it is the best option. But I kinda messed up with division levels, so just trying to use this for learning experience for now :)
Yes, sure. Added my attempt at explanation below.
Hi there,
So this is important even for highpoly / decimated highpoly model?
What do you mean by "is this important" ? Sure enough you want to fix your issue, there's nothing "important" or "not important" about all this ...
Regarding your tests : I'd say that your methodology is off, because nothing guarantees that what Maya does to the model on import is the same thing that Substance does. So the "Imported to Maya just to check it" step is somewhat meaningless - especially since there are many possible settings on import.
Have a look at your model in a viewer that doesn't do anything to the model - Autodesk provides you with FBXReview for just that. You'll be able to see exactly what's going on shading-wise, natively.
And at the end of the day you are dealing with a rather low density high after decimation anyways - therefore there's plenty of things you can do in Maya to manipulate the normals, harden them selectively, faceweight them, and so on. Still, there isn't much point in decimating this model in the first place - so why bother ? Substance can sure enough load it just fine.
My apologies for the bad phrasing. I am just trying to figure out correct steps between somewhat finished model in zbrush and prepared for texturing model in painter. I haven't worked with zbrush before so some things are just weird.
I suppose I tried exactly what you suggest. But it seems like painter just ignored all those normals manipulations.
Nevertheless thanks for the advices 😁