mirrored normal map problem?

rooster

I've normal mapped a solder type guy for a mod and I need to mirror over the low poly, so that I have a symmetrical dude with mirrored normals. The problem is that the second I mirror the mesh, the normal map glitches slightly. I could maybe understand if it screwed up when I welded the two halfs, but nope its just upon mirroring that does the trick. I do notice that the model renders perfectly with no glitches, so is this just a max 8 normal display bug? will it likely affect its implementation into a game engine or can I ignore it?

incase you're not sure, I'm referring to the blown-out specular areas, which do not happen on the left side.

cheers!
roo

cholden

Have you tested in game? Often the shader handles normals differently. I ask because this is often present in editor, but, for example, in quake4 or doom3, this can render correctly.

rooster

its a coincidence you answered this cholden as you might be able to tell me directly Its not actually a mod its for, but zymotic which I believe is a standalone engine, and I've been given one of your models for reference . I dont have the engine on my pc but Ive asked them to send me a screenshot so we'll see

ps your heavy soldier guy is crazy but awesome

cholden

Thought it looked like that. My original was mirrored all over, and it looked fine in game.

Rekmar

sometimes even if it looks fine in renders it may look glitchy when in-game

what cholden said is true, different engines handle the normals differently.

some engines do not allow normalmaps to be mirrored, which is why some engines for the artists to make each polygon uwv unique. it happened to me in my project (mirrored normals looked weird in both 3ds max and in-game) so I told my programmer and she made it work in-game (god knows how). however in my case it was a matter of all the normals being weird instead of glitches here and there
pic of my problem before it was fixed:


to answer your question in a short answer: test it in-game. if it doesn't work, your programmer might make it work

rooster

thanks rekmar, they have mirrored normal models working ingame so hopefully its not an issue.. Im just puzzed why in max the exact same geom mirrored would cause a problem, I did it with the war general and it worked perfeclty. looks good by the way