Really strange normals issue.

dwgagner

Alright so been struggling with figuring this out for a few hours with no luck so thought I'd throw this up here. This is after searching through this forum and several others for similar problems of which none of the proposed solutions have worked for me.

I have a character head I modeled in max, brought into zbrush, subdivided to level 6, sculpted the extra details I wanted. Texture worked out fine, normal map appeared to look ok yet when I render it I get a nasty seam along the uv borders. My uv's do not appear to be mirrored and my normals look fine when I apply an edit normals modifier.

I ended up attempting to paint out the seams only to discover they can't be painted out. To further test this I applied a solid blank normal map and still end up with seams when I render.

Here are some photos of what's going on, has anyone run into this before? It's like as if it isn't applying the normal map at all.

To apply the normal map I am selecting the material I have the diffuse texture applied to > maps > bump > normal > normals.jpg set at 30/100 bump

edit normals mod applied
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/6953/editnormals.jpg

blank normal map
http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/6116/56137860.jpg

rendered normal map
http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/3189/74682115.jpg

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks. -Dustin

Will Faucher

Set your bump material to 100/100. There is literally no difference between the flat normal map and the good one. Then perhaps we can help.

Kawe

What did you use to create the normal map?

krisCrash

3dsmax doesn't display normal maps correctly, it CAN show them but it isnt easy to set up and it is known to produce errors (with mirroring, incidentally)
You can try 3point shader which makes it much easier to set up multi-texture materials and use normal maps http://www.3pointstudios.com/3pointshader_lite.shtml
I am not saying that is your problem, but I think the lacking normal display ability might cause it. And 3point shader will allow you to test your normal map as it would appear in an engine.

Snader

I think you just haven't turned on hardware rendering in the viewport yet.

Will Faucher

I think he was doing a quick render. Regardless, he needs to bump his bump material from 30, to 100.