Normal baking trouble.

Grobi

Hi there,

I've been following this tutorial on current gen game art workflows and now I'm stuck on baking the normal maps for my low poly model. I've followed the tutorial but can't seem to get it to work correctly, I'm using max 9 where the tutorial uses 2009 but I can't see that making much of a difference.

Here's the low poly mesh and the high poly version;



And here's a shot of the cage intersecting the high poly;



Here is the normal map that I generate when using xnormal and my UV layout;



My normal map looks odd in parts and when I tested the map in crazy bump on the low poly version of the model it has a bunch of errors. The only pieces working properly are the wheel and lid of the dumpster, the rest are messed up somehow.

Could it be an unwrapping error, smoothing groups or the cage of the model being off?

I'm quite new to the whole baking normal maps thing so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for any help.

butt_sahib

I think you should post up the result aswell i.e. what your model looks like with the maps applied...


EDIT:
Also, you should take some time and read through this thread (all you need to know about normal map screwups and more)
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=48305

Marine

tested the map in crazy bump

yeah... don't do that, use your 3d app

Grobi

Sure, here's a preview of the normal map in crazy bump;



The door looks ok but the rest is kind of off. Thanks for the link too by the way, I'll have a trawl through there to find a solution too.

gsokol

It looks like things didn't bake perfectly...Try pushing the cage out a little bit.

butt_sahib

the only solution i can think of is :
- Either add in more control edges to your low (i.e. not have so many 90 degree sharp corners, rather have them beveled some) and rebake
- Do the above and use object space normals

READ THROUGH HERE (this will explain what i mean about chamfering your edges and object space normals)
and while youre at it, be sure to read through the whole wiki...its really sacred

Good luck!

Eric Chadwick

The wiki certainly is not sacred. In fact there are a few things wrong in there, so read with a grain of salt. I'm hoping to spend some more time on it in the coming months. Eventually we'll be able to open up the wiki to everyone for editing.

Grobi

Thanks for all the help guys! I read through a chunk of the wiki and tried your suggestions and am now using a combination of baking the normals in max and using x-normal in order to achieve better results.



Still some tweaking that needs to be done but it's much better than before.

Joao Sapiro

very helpfull thread :

http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=68173