Mirror creating seams in Max

Razgriz

I know, common problem, but I've been trying to solve it for hours. I can even cover up the seam with something, but there's a massive lighting difference on the two sides that is even more evident if you wave an omni around.

I'm using Max's render to texture to bake everything. The right side of the model share a good deal of UV space with the left, and overlapping UV's have been moved before baking. All my smoothing groups match my UV seams as well, including where the model is cut to mirror. Everything seems to be by the book, and I have literally looked through every topic on the wiki I can find - does anybody have any suggestions?

Razgriz

Yeah, I was trying to save as much space as I could - and in hindsight I probably should have just made the center piece unique - but I know I've seen other people fix it to where it at least isn't as obviously bad as mine is.

On related note, I don't know what the heck is wrong with my AO bakes. I have never encountered this before. It does this both with and without an exploded mesh, so it isn't raycasting intersection voodoo.

Razgriz

Yes, I am using a cage. I tried cranking up the samples and filter size, etc, but it still gave me the same issue. I went ahead and redid the UV's - and afterwards I baked the AO without any issues, so, who knows. The lighting issues are fixed, and with the diffuse it quelled a lot of my smoothing fears. I'll be posting the progress on my project here:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=85677

Thanks for the help, dustin.