maya normal map problems

onionhead_o

this is seriously getting on my nerves. i tried many ways to fix this but none of it works. i even tried using xnormals but it stilll wont display it correctly in maya high quality render.

heres the problem



how its suppose to look like


for the problemed piece i have cleared history, freeze transformed and centre pivot.....

i have even reverse the flipped normals because it was a pc duplicated from the other side.

i duno if its the high poly that i m baking from that causes this prblem or its the low poly itself.

MoP

Try Normals -> Unlock Normals. It looks like that piece has been mirrored and the normals are messed up.

Firebert

also try Normals > Set to Face

onionhead_o

heres the maya bake. so fuk up. after unlocking the normals

Harbinger

It looks like your UV's are flipped/inverted. In the UV editor there's a button that shades your UV's based on stretching. If those particular UV's are reddish then they're inverted.

MoP

That's not the UVs being flipped, that's the faces themselves being flipped.
Make sure you've got "double sided" turned off, otherwise you'll never know if your mesh is inverted.

A bake like that is a fairly sure bet that your target mesh (or source mesh!) is made of inverted polygons.

In a tangent-space normal map, as soon as your blue channel goes below 128 (leading the colours to look green/red instead of blue/purple), the per-pixel normals are essentially pointing "backwards", which is never correct.

onionhead_o

yup its the uvs. my bad. I forgot to turn on check flipped faces
(oh damn i spoke too soon, the uvs are proper. but nrm is still the same. and yes two side lighting is turn off)

malcolm

Make sure you have "opposite" turned off which is not available until you turn off double sided, then freeze the transform of your model then you'll know if it's inside out. Duplicating a model with negative scale and then freezing the transform of that model will set the opposite flag which can get confusing unless you understand why it does that.

onionhead_o

thanks for the help Mop, Firebert, Harbringer and Malcolm. It turns out that it was the highpoly that was the problem. so what i did was reverse the normal and rebake.