you don't get artifacts from xnormal bake? Lucky you.
I've had far too many issues when baking in mudbox, for reasons still unknown to me. Switched to xnormal, and had better results without even using a cage. Just selected my high, low and pressed the huge "Generate Maps" button. And bam, better results.
I don't even think Mudbox supports cages. But then again, I haven't baked a normal map in Mudbox since the 2010 version.
Does your low poly mesh have one single smoothing group? xNormal takes smoothing groups into account. That may be why your normal map is coming out faceted.
Most likely, this is a messy OBJ exported from mudbox. Import it into Maya, check your uvs, soften your edges, etc. Possibility even just importing and re-exporting from maya will fix it.
Replies
the hair behind the ear is prettty much a 90 degree angle. shoudl I slope it a bit?
the top of the eyelids have some overlapping edges(poly, not UV) ...would that cause artifacts?
as for the bottom eyelid ans the bottom of the ear, I'm at a loss...
besides overlapping UVs, what other things typically cause these artifacts?
I will try both your suggestions
you don't get artifacts from xnormal bake? Lucky you.
I don't even think Mudbox supports cages. But then again, I haven't baked a normal map in Mudbox since the 2010 version.
xNormal appears to be ignoring the hi res geometry completely.
I also get this error alot, even tho I can't find any problems with the UVs in Maya:
any ideas to address this?
for the time being I'm going back to Maya/transfer maps...