Confusion with Normal baking issues around edges/borders

DustyShinigami

Hi

This issue has been a reoccuring problem that I've not been able to figure out and was wondering if someone could help me? For a clothing asset I've made, I've followed this workflow on getting clean topology and UVs from Marvelous Designer to Maya/ZBrush - https://www.artstation.com/blogs/emilie_boisvert/RDKR/marvelous-designer-to-maya-part-1-retopology-domo-arigato-auto-retopo

Everything has worked nicely and I used the same method for adding thickness, unitizing the thin outer edges/borders and they've all baked nicely in Substance Painter. Can't say I've noticed any glaring issues; they all look pretty clean.





But with another piece - a gorget - I don't seem to be getting the same results. There are thin strips that I've used Unitize on and then unfolded along either U or V and then straightened. It has the same resolution. For test bakes 1K and for the final bakes it'll be 4K. However for the gorget, I'm not getting clean results.



What could the reason be for this? Is it because edges like this need to be thicker...? They certainly are for the clothing anyway. The low and high are matching pretty well, though I know there's a few areas where the silhouette isn't quite right. I can sort this out another time. I've deleted the inside faces and part of the back, which won't be seen, and I've also included some additional edge loops to better match the curvature. And yes, I've played around with the Frontal Distance slider. I get that these long thin strips aren't very big, and therefore won't get much resolution, which is what I chalked it up to before, but then, they're not for the clothing either. And those baked out fine.



Any ideas? Or any advice on how to get them to bake nicely? Thanks.

Fabi_G

Hi! can you share the part that gives you the issue?

DustyShinigami

Fabi_G said:

Hi! can you share the part that gives you the issue?

Sure. To be fair, since doing the maps at 4K, the issue doesn't look to be much of a problem, and some areas are hidden anyway. But I've taken a mid poly (sub-div level 3 in ZBrush, I think) and some parts don't appear to be matching up very well. The collar area also needs a bit of a bevel to avoid this baking issue at the top:



But it's mainly these thin strips/borders here:



The quality always looks quite low or there's some bleed.

DustyShinigami

Yeah, did another test bake. This time things are matching up better and I bevelled that neck region and kept the insides as well, but these thin strips are still a bit iffy.

pior

In this context, "sharing the parts" means actually uploading the necessary and sufficient files for people to reproduce the issue.

DustyShinigami

pior said:

In this context, "sharing the parts" means actually uploading the necessary and sufficient files for people to reproduce the issue.

Ohhh. Sorry. Totally misunderstood. ^^; I'm away from my desktop at the moment, so I'm not able to set things up so the file size is smaller. At the moment it's over 170MB.

DustyShinigami

Fabi_G said:

Hi! can you share the part that gives you the issue?

Okay, I've reduced the file size to about 60MB by making the accessories maps 1K. Although I imagine I'll need to include the high poly file...? The rivets on it are wrong. I swear I'd corrected those in ZBrush and saved, but not according to Perforce. :-\ I'll have to rectify those another time. Hope the links work...
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kfnzhduj1mleakc8ve11w/gorget_high.fbx?rlkey=wyh6tu60stir1cgndqf9y710n&st=retamg50&dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/r2g4vs4pdd85xy2qo6noo/SP_PretaGarb.spp?rlkey=qz2wiel8lnlj7bxk50wh7qelz&st=bzun9s5h&dl=0

Ironically enough, when I did another experiment with just the object on its own, and did a test bake at 1K, everything was perfectly fine. o_O

EDIT: The links don't work for me :-\