Normal map Seams problem with mudbox workflow

NAIMA

Hi , I have this problem but first I want to explain what I am trying to do ......


I am making a rock , I am making it perfect seams one one single texture in order to be able to rotate all sides the rock and have some special detail wet side on the rock so for this I need a specific texture and I can't use just a tiled one for it ....

that said I made a normal map out of the rock texture I have that I created using mudbox painting so to have seamless .... problem is that the extraction of the normal from this seamless texture is not seamless and has some lines in the borders of the uvmapping , so to fix it I tought to import the normal map into mudbox and work there the seams on the psd file ....




fact is that first of all the normal map in mudbox dont seemslike much how it should look as for example ingame anyway I just wanted to pick the seams so I could just cut out the borders once I reworked them , so i sculpt a bit of details on the overlapping borders to fix the seams of the normal map , then I extract it , but this is the result , a mostly plain normal with some spiky artefacts , I saved as 8bit png and followed the instructions in the help ....
I dunno how to fix this so can someone point me how to do ? or eventually if has a better workflow to fix those normal map seams?

I wanted the normals to match the diffuse map that's why I created the normal out of the texture seamless I did ......

Thanks for any help and tips ....

Eric Chadwick

Your description rambles a bit, hard to tell what your workflow is.

The most important part though... what application are you seeing the seams in? Doesn't matter if there are seams in Mudbox or in Max, it matters if there are seams in your final game rendering. Weren't you working on a Crysis level?

Also it sounds like you're trying to fix the seams on the high-res mesh. You should try to fix them on the final low-res in-game mesh.

NAIMA

yes I check the seams in crysis level but I can see them also in mudbox when I import the normal psd file but in max I didnt even try couse I know it comes all time messed up somehow ....

r_fletch_r

Are you refering to the stretching along the seams? Thats a mudbox problem. prior to 2011 it didnt smooth the uv map when you subdivided the mesh. Have you tried doing the bake in max with render to texture?

NAIMA

no it just get a bad normal when I extract it ...

yiannisk

have you tried enabling smooth UV and smooth Source models
when you generate the normal map in mudbox?

oglu

mud 2010 had a problem with normalmap seams...
think its fixed in the SP1...

Allert

Hey guys,

i have a problem regarding normalmap extraction in Mudbox. As you can see on the picture, there's a ugly seam going all the way down the middle.



I actually exported half the model to mudbox, and used that to bake my normals, as i've heard mudbox doesn't really like overlapping UVs. I have a feeling that this has something to do with it.. Anyway, the edge's normals are soft, so that shouldn't be a problem. I really hope someone can help me out here.

thanks a lot in advance

cheers,

Allert

Eric Chadwick

This is probably because you baked only half the model. When you delete the other half, the vertex normals along the hole will bend towards the hole a bit, because there are no faces on the other side to average with.

Re-mirror the mesh, welding the verts along the seam. Then select the mirrored UVs and move them exactly 1 UV unit, so the normal map baker doesn't "see" them.

Allert

Hey Eric, that worked! Neat trick. thanks a lot

Allert