Normal Map baked good but I see low poly edges in other apps
polycounter lvl 13
Hi,
I applied all the rules to the normal maps baking and in SP it's all good:
But when I use it in 3ds max or blender I see hard edges overlay with normal map:
How can I resolve this?
Replies
It's fine . Normal map bevels over sharp edges never going to be 100% perfect. Could be better only with rounding in geometry. 3dmax never rendered things right in its view ports .
Make sure to triangulate before baking to ensure that the geometry is the same between programs (Wiki: Triangulation).
Also ensure the normal map is sampled as non-color and the green channel has the correct orientation for the program (Wiki: Common Swizzle Coordinates).
I would think what I'm getting is the only quality I can get, if not this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyOWzpKPDjQ
somehow the guy gets this:
I tried baking with blender, but it's awful for me. marmoset also bad. SP the only which give good quality.
Also, I follow all the guides on the UV, shading, triangulation, non-color for normal map, green channel orientation and all of this
"I tried baking with blender, but it's awful for me. marmoset also bad."
The issue(s) lie(s) somewhere else. Upload your low and your high and people will be able to show you examples of good bakes with your meshes.
@Tosyk ... about this img i too have run into the "love" of whatever they are doing with their view-port, they seem to be utilizing some neat "tricks" or are just ahead of the game in understanding how to utilize their shading algorithms, from what i can gather it has something to do with an nvidia attribute in the shader model in the view-port (the results we see, "being", "perfect".) I am at a loss as to why all other view-ports do not act similarly, also their lighting and shadowing is excellent. you would expect similar results in similar applications and yet we do not, which shows me one of two things, subs devs know what they are doing, are lying to us or others do not know as much as them, does this stem also to other engines? if substance products achieve these results how come there isn't the same quality across anything else that resembles, mimics, or projects 3D material as substance does. (i refuse to use the conglomerate name of .A. products)
Anyway just echoing i see and feel your pain and am trying to understand the results on other view-ports.
Edit, also i still use Xnormal cause i find it somewhat useful still, if you want to test another baker.
if the tangent basis used in the baker and viewport don't match you get shit results
if you try to bake a greater difference in surface direction than a normal map can handle (absolute maximum in perfect conditions is 180 degrees) you get shit results
this is explained at length in the threads about normal map baking - there is no magic, they all work in basically the same way, if the result is wrong in a viewport you're feeding it bad information
in this case - make sure substance is baking in mikktspace, tell max to use mikktspace in it's viewports, ensure triangulation, normals and tangents are consistent between max and substance and finally make sure your normal map isn't getting a color space transform applied somewhere