Can someone help...(Hi/low poly bake problem)

Jacecr

I was following a tutorial on Cgtuts.How to make a next gen dumpster.I'm fine up until the baking portion.When I place my normal map on my low poly there's ridges missing from the front and artifacts on the side.Also the lid is dented inwards.For the hi poly low poly bake i'm using x normal.I really don't know why it's all falling apart.Can someone help?

Jacecr

Close up

sltrOlsson

It's hard to say what's wrong. But i would guess your search rays is to long. You can change it where you load your lowpoly.

And it looks like you have some hard edges (smooth groups something something. I'm a maya user) on the lid.

And next time, this thread should be in the Technical Talk

Jacecr

sorry about not posting this in technical talk.Can someone move it there?I found 2 errors.My side pieces have overlaps.I should have dragged the sections with overlaps off the UV area.And the dumpster lids hi poly is not close enough to the low poly cage. I still can't figure out why the front strips didn't show.

glynnsmith

Can you show a wire of the high poly on its own?

Jacecr

I'd have to post it when I get home.I'm at work right now.:(Sorta lucky my boss let's me use the net.

glynnsmith

Looking at the image you posted with, I think, your LP and HP together, it looks like you're baking both the LP and the HP together, onto the same map.

Jacecr

nope, I separated all of the pieces that I have symmetry applied on and did hi poly to low poly bakes on those individual pieces.(the main piece, lid, handle, wheel piece, and wheel) then I took those individual normal maps and overlayed them onto each other.

Der Hollander

If you're using xNormal to bake out these normals, it's going to have a hissy fit about those duplicated meshes and stacked UVs. I'd suggest a different approach, by first deleting anything that's duplicate so you only have one copy of each unique mesh. Then, bake out your normals using only the unique pieces, and then duplicate whatever pieces you need. That way, you don't have to fuss with trying to stack the UVs yourself, as the computer does it for you. A word of warning, you'll need to bake your AO map separately with the duplicated pieces or you'll be missing shadows.

I've also done a paintover of your UV sheet with some pointers, I'll list them here so there's no confusion of my intention. Firstly, I would weld those corners of your lids. The corners will stretch a bit, but they'll be much easier to texture instead of having to try to match up 8 different UV seams. Secondly, you've got two meshes laying on top of each other just barely in the lower left-hand corner. And last but not least, you've got your prong holes (I dunno what they're called) too close to the border of the box they're in.

Also, I agree with sltrOlsson, you've got some hard edges that need to go bye-bye. Hit it up with the Auto Smooth tool in the Element menu, adjust your angle so you don't get a hard edge in the low poly, and let the normal map handle the rest. Try it out again and see if anything works better, hope this helps and good luck.

Jacecr

So your saying I should reduce the low poly and high poly versions to their unique assets,
Then bake the normal map?
Afterwards run my symmetry modifiers.And AO bake?
(I really don't know how to bake AO)
Would i do my AO on a seperate UV channel flat mapping applied?Sigh i really feel like school cheated me.I barely know how to bake a high to a low poly.
I'll work on your suggestions as soon as I get home from work.Thanks

praetus

One of the issues it seems you're running into is stacked UVs. When you try and bake an object that shares UV space (like something thrown through a symmetry or mirror modifier) the system can kind of freak out or bake the wrong item. A quick way to fix this is select shells that are overlapping and move them outside of the 0,1 UV space. When you do this make sure they are moved by and even number. No decimals. This might help with some of your issues.

Jacecr

I still don't know why the seams in the front didn't show up