Anyway to smooth out a specific part of this low poly?

alexus_sanchez

I need to smooth out this circle of faces. I think the problem is that the circle is made of triangles and the inner circle is slightly raised from the center, causing it to create this weird shading I know that I should probably redo this mesh and avoid triangles for this cylinder but that would mean having to redo the baking phase and normal map skewing. Is there any way to fix this? I have tried:
- Auto smooth (with sharp edges)
- Weighted normals
- Separating face and using weighted normals (works partly)

If there is no other way, I'll just redo it all.


triangles in substance.


it's very faint but it can be seen on the lowpoly model where the problem originates from.


The wireframe.

sacboi

Try applying a shrinkwrap modifier, see if that solves your issue i.e. using a guide mesh I find outputs the best results.

Here's an old Blender solution, I still use for class A geometry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rlMzsBWtPY&t=1s

Grubber

Maybe this be usefull:
https://youtu.be/W8FDlPcUCME?si=qvMA_pAEf8mVzWg4

alexus_sanchez

Unfortunately the fixes didn't work so I will have to learn it the hard way and redo steps again. Thanks for the suggestions anyways guys. 

alexus_sanchez

After quadrating the circle, it still didn't fix the issue. However, I managed to solve it by adding another line of edge around the inner part of the circle which managed to get rid of the weird shading.

Neox

this is odd and should really not be needed, the angles are so flat, a normalmap should be able to compensate for this small bit of lowpoly shading. unless you're not using a normalmap?

gnoop

I use same modelling techie as in this video https://youtu.be/3rlMzsBWtPY?t=130

But instead of shrink wrap I use "data transfer" to transfer vertex normals .   It works perfectly well usually . You can do a rats nest of  polygons and edges, super tiny and chaotic    but once normals are transferred  it's  perfectly ok usually . 

The shading  could depends on vertex normals only.   It's   the soft like 3d max  and sub-dive  modelling technique where shading  depend on edge flow  exclusively.    There is always an other option.      Came  from  old days  of extremely low poly modelling   before  normal maps where al those extra loops to  only support nice shading  was a big no-no and a waste of vertexes.   Works perfectly ok  now too. 

EarthQuake

As @Neox said, if you're using normal maps, you really should not need to do anything special like transferring custom normals or other convoluted workflows. 

Make sure:

1. Your triangulation matches between modeling app, baker, and target engine
2. Your tangent space matches between all apps (generally this is Mikktspace these days)
3. Tangent handedness (green channel) of the normal map is configured correctly
4. Color space is set correctly (linear) for the normal map

gnoop

In my experience  it's only  Unreal  engine where Mikktspace matching  allows you to care less of shading gradients.   It looks more or less same as in Substance bakers.   Unity is not that good  last time I tried.    Any sharp  light angle + shiny material  and you instantly see those  shading  gradients  with normal map or without.   Any  SSAO  over it  and it makes it even more obvious. 

And I bet  you don't see it in Unreal just because  of denser geometry people tend to do nowadays  . If your game  have   LOD mechanism   dynamically dropping  LODs  when FPS is bad   you  will see those gradients up to your face sometimes.

That said  your  bolt like detail  is perfectly ok  to fix just by normal map.  What I wrote is more about   something like this car example  , a complex  curvature  with holes  , intersecting cylinders etc where  you most probably  wouldn't have those shading supporting loops in the second LOD already.