cutted normal tops?

NAIMA

Hi I have made this mesh



but When I export it to Xnormal and I use a low poly that just a cilinder similar to this armwrist apart that it doesn't have the spikes , well the spikes in the normal map in xnormal gets cutted on the top and so look like truncated cones ... any idea why?

MrFrags

Hi man, actually your problem is that xNormal uses a bad ray distance to make the normal map.

Just try to increase the maximum frontal or rear ray distance depend of
the orientation of the normals of your low poly mesh (inside the "low definition meshes" panel).

You can use the "ray distance calculator" in the tool panel to help you in the process.

Here, I made a tutorial about baking.
http://mathiascadyck.blogspot.com/2011/01/test-6.html

NAIMA

thankyou yes that helped ... but I dont get why some of the cones get stretched on the normal map ...

NAIMA

Here is what happens to the normal , why they get projected thisweird instead than normally on the surface? they seem like projected like if it wason a ball?

cryrid

That would be due to the mesh normal's. I think it was this thread that covers it:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81154

Adding an edge loop or two towards the edges of the main cylindrical shape would probably straighten things out.

passerby

use a cage instead of averaged ray distance, and more geometry, those spikes are way more than just surface detials, they really should have there own geo in the Lowpoly

Wesley

Yeah to be honest you're not really going to get anything that looks like those spikes in your normal map with such low geo.

NAIMA

I did use photoshop I copied the best cone and pasted all over the wristguard ...

uncle

Remember it is only a normal map, you should include the spikes in the mesh if you want the silhouette.

About this weird projection - did you adjust the cage manually? If so, offsetting some vertices more then other can cause this. For best quality whole cage should be more or less at equal distance from the highpoly mesh. At least that's what comes to my mind.

passerby

fuck really just go and fix the problem, and add geo since normals aren't meant to give you details like this.

Ace-Angel

Ditto what Passerby said.