Seams Visable even after Hard Edge.

Undergrave

Hi.
This issues has been with me for a while. I have problem when baking my hard surf. models. I've tried all methods and I still get Visable seams. This is using marmoset. I did the smoothing groups correct I think. I set hard edges. And I cut them. But I still get the seams when you're close to be visable. Is this a normal thing? Am I deluded or am I doing something wrong? I uploaded the High poly just to show the size of the bevel I am baking and I uploaded the low poly to see the Hard Edges. If anyone has an idea Thanks alot. This was exported from Blender to Marmoset. I am thinking of trying to run the model in Maya, do the Hard Edges there and try to export from there. This is something that I can't learn for all this time. Sometimes I get better bakes when I do the UVs without cutting the sharp edges. 
Maybe it's the export from blender.. I do not know. I also triangulated the mesh. 
NOTE this is a 4k bake and the uvs are packed auto with 90 degree align so I think it's not the uvs. I dunno. 

If anyone can help with this I will be forever greatful.

Eric Chadwick

There's always going to be hairline shading seams with normal maps, since 8 bits per channel can't represent precise angles for the original normals. 

You need to ask yourself if anyone is ever going to see this, once the model is textured with diffuse/metal/rough, and lit, and shown at an average viewing distance, in a real in-game scenario. No one is going to notice this.

Undergrave

Eric Chadwick said:

There's always going to be hairline shading seams with normal maps, since 8 bits per channel can't represent precise angles for the original normals. 

You need to ask yourself if anyone is ever going to see this, once the model is textured with diffuse/metal/rough, and lit, and shown at an average viewing distance, in a real in-game scenario. No one is going to notice this.

Yeah it doesn't actually look bad from a normal distance. I guess I was abit deluded. But I saw some models on Sketch Fab that looked pro and if you zoooom like relally zoom there's seams. So I gues that was me being deluded.  

Thank you very much for the answer man. I am trying to turn pro and I have problems with the Tehnical part. Like baking , Packing UVs , knowing how much padding , how to align them
 I feel there's not alot of resources about that . Since pros do it very diffrent from what I've seen then the ones you see on tutorials and stuff. I am self taught and I am trying to find resources on this topic. 
If you guys have anything that will help in the tehnical part. I am thinking of getting a mentorship, but atm I can't fund it so that will wait. 
If anyone has resources on this topic od share.

Once again Thanks alot !! Means alot man. 

Cheers! Hopefully now i Can continue.

Eric Chadwick

Hey! Glad I can help. It just so happens that we have a great deal of resources that we’ve gathered as a community, on our wiki, and as Forum threads.

A couple related wiki pages:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_map

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Coordinates

Related Forum threads:
Of Bit Depths, Banding and Normal Maps

Skew you buddy! Making sense of skewed normal map details.

Understanding averaged normals and ray projection/Who put waviness in my normal map

You're making me hard. Making sense of hard edges, uvs, normal maps and vertex counts

pior

"I feel there's not alot of resources about that . Since pros do it very diffrent from what I've seen then the ones you see on tutorials and stuff.

One great resource is simply to study actual models from commercial projects. You can look up games that have Steam Workshop integration for cosmetic items (Dota2, TF2, Warframe ...), as these will have an art guide with FBX exports of the main models from the game to be used as a technical reference.

And then you can dive into game modding in general, for games that may not have official tools and workflow - as these will have third party user-created tools for model ripping and integration. You don't even have to do the model extraction yourself, as there is a number of websites hosting such models rips.

Undergrave

pior said:

"I feel there's not alot of resources about that . Since pros do it very diffrent from what I've seen then the ones you see on tutorials and stuff.

One great resource is simply to study actual models from commercial projects. You can look up games that have Steam Workshop integration for cosmetic items (Dota2, TF2, Warframe ...), as these will have an art guide with FBX exports of the main models from the game to be used as a technical reference.

And then you can dive into game modding in general, for games that may not have official tools and workflow - as these will have third party user-created tools for model ripping and integration. You don't even have to do the model extraction yourself, as there is a number of websites hosting such models rips.

That's a great Idea. Oh man yeah I can actually do that. That's actually a gooood idea wtf. Nice. Thank youuu

gnoop

in my experience  those hard edge seams are getting even more visible in actual game  usually  by SS AO , reflections,  contact shadows   etc
I do padding pixels  overlayed  by themselves with  some transparency factor input  except IN blue channel .   Sometimes it makes IT a bit better  or mayBE I just deceive myself.

Undergrave

 
I think I got a better bake now with some redoing on UVs but. The seams are still there if you zoooom like really really close. We'll see when I start texturing. I know that also I kinda made the bevels small so that might be the issue too. Might be. But I will read the posts that Eric Chadwick sent. I will see if I can make something out of them. 
Cheers!