Project with Normals error

System

This is my first time working with normals, so I have been following along a tutorial, but still ending up with some crazy errors.
So I have uploaded the project with all the needed files.
If a kind soul would be so kind and look it through and tell me what I'm doing wrong, It would mean a whole lot to me.
Please help me!



http://rapidshare.com/files/318192857/Dumpster.rar

EarthQuake

You should post some images, not many people have the time/specific software to check through your project files. Also you should specify which software you're using, and try to be more specific about your problems.

System

Sure thing-

Any help?

Ben Apuna

That looks good to me, or at least that is what I would expect to get with low poly geometry like that and a normal map baked from the high poly geometry you have there.

Normal maps just fake shading they don't actually alter the silhouette of your low poly geometry.

If you want nice grooves on the lid of your low poly dumpster then you need to model them in.

Pedro Amorim

if you dont have geometry in that area, what do you expect?

Ark

You could also scale your islands in a tad to account for padding.

System

It just that the groove at the front of the dumpster looks pretty decent while the once on the lid looks quite strange...

eld

You'll have to bake that with a cage if you want to have hard edges there and still a proper transition in the normals.

that or add a support-edge

Ben Apuna

The groove at the front is great. The reason low poly model + normal map carries off the illusion so well in this case is because it matches the silhouette of the high poly model perfectly.

If you really cannot spare the triangles to add grooves to the lid of the dumpster one thing you can do is bake an ambient occlusion map and overlay it on top of your diffuse and specular maps. That way those areas will be shaded in a way that more closely mimics what the high poly looks like.

However it still won't look right, and as previously stated, the best approach to this would be to just add the geometry needed to support the silhouette of those top grooves in your low poly model.