Yet another thread about problematic normal maps
polycounter lvl 8
Hey there, thanks for checking my problem.
I'm using Max2010, Xioliul shader (tried 3point too), maps baked in xNormal
Everything is smoothed, only cap is divided by hard edges.
And problem is self explainable by looking at this image:
I'm using Max2010, Xioliul shader (tried 3point too), maps baked in xNormal
Everything is smoothed, only cap is divided by hard edges.
And problem is self explainable by looking at this image:
Replies
I'll work on capping cylinders.
But main problem is still that seam, how do I get rid of it?
-Did you flip xnormals' green channel setting before baking? or in the shader...or manually in photoshop? In other words, flip your green channel and look for improvements
-How much padding did you use? (looks like it could use a lot more)
Also, another good habit is always keeping multiple version of your mesh with different densities in the topology. This mean, in the case of the camera dustin pointed, I'll have multiple versions, all from the same base, all with the same uv's (corrected as needed) and used to for testing different bakes, especially in Xnormal since with the latest updates is blazing fast.
I honestly wish it was all a matter of 'see what feels right and bake', but it's not. Sometimes, you have to get creative with your solutions on what could help.
Also, broken UV islands...hard edges best friend.
Sorry but this is just bad advice +on top of bad advice, baking, then removing geometry, then editing uvs?
Editing your geometry after you've done your bakes will alter your mesh normals, and generally cause smoothing errors. It is not recommended unless you can make sure the mesh normals stay exactly the same. It is best to simply use supporting geometry in a way that improves your model, and leave them in.
Editing uvs after the bake, well, there really shouldn't be any need to explain why that is a bad idea.
Minor wavyiness looks to be about the least of the concerns here with this bake, so i'm not sure why you guys keep going over that stuff. Here is a big thread on waviness(stickied also): http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81154
It looks like the green channel needs to be inverted, this should solve a good deal of your problems. Can't really go any further until you're properly displaying the maps.
This method will not work in all apps the same, for instance in maya, editing the "cage/envelope" will only adjust the ray distance, not ray direction.
In this specific example with the camera, you would be better off just using a more appropriate amount of geometry, even if you tweak the normals to be "straight" there, that doesn't mean your model is actually going to look good.
People get too caught up with how to find tricks and hacks to avoid problems like this and loose sight of the fact that straightening the lines on a model like this is just going to result in an ugly, lowpoly looking model with straight lines, not a nice looking model. To get nice looking cylindrical models, you need to use a certain amount of geometry to ensure roundness, the more round and thus more closely your mesh matches the high, the better your bakes will look, and the better your model will look.
In a situation where you're doing such an unimportant asset that has such a low geometry budget that you would skimp on the roundness of a cylinder, it is unlikely to be worth your time to use special workflows to "fix" it.
This guy's model looks to have plenty of geometry, and smoothing errors and an improperly set up shader/bake is likely the source of his problems, as well as using a baker and renderer that do not have sync'd up tangent basis. There shouldn't be any need to set up a custom cage for him.