Zbrush Normal Map Smear issues

4leaf

I'm a student that is currently having the most horrid trouble in the world with normal mapping. I feel as if I have really tried everything, but simply can't get the job done as far as normal maps go.

I am trying to produce Normals in Zbrush atm... and my Normal maps come out smeared horribly... I have no idea what causes this, how to fix it, or how to even prevent it.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated for a complete beginner at this.. Thank you very much.

ghost-d

Before you spend too much time trying to find out what could be the problem and how to solve it (from my point of view there are some messed up UVs - most likely some vertices stretched over the UV layout, it could have happened along the way as you were sculpting) I would suggest trying something else than Zbrush for baking normal maps.

XNormal would be my first choice - It´s free and easy to use. Just export your hipoly and lowpoly models as .obj files from ZBrush (hipoly would be the highest subdiv. level and lowpoly the subdivision level you were using for this bake), load it into XNormal, go to bake settings and check "normal map" and let the program do its thing.

You can find XNormal here:
http://www.xnormal.net/1.aspx
There should also be some tutorials on how to use it, so you might just check it. But don´t worry, it might seem a bit confusing to see a whole new bunch of buttons at first, but it´s all pretty self-explanatory. Give it a shot.

Dan!

looks like your your UVs got mangled- export your low res and check - if so, you can fix it in your 3d package of choice then reimport it- or use goZ ,whichever.-good luck

4leaf

Thank you very much for your responses. I have fixed the problem. The UV maps did infact get destroyed during the sculpting process. I fixed the issue by taking the UVs and fixing them in Maya, also triangulating my low poly meshes helped prevent mangled UVs as well.

A new issue arose however... Xnormal refuses to work for me. In fact, I don't believe Xnormal has even worked once for me. It just crashes during the rendering of the normal maps. Anyone have any idea why?