Normal map editing problem PLEASE HELP MEEEE! :(

Arthur Ramazanov

Hello everyone - I have been working on a character - I did normal casts of all different armor pieces separately - but now I want to combine them - Separately I have found that they all look ok nothing wrong - but when I combine them together within photoshop - via

Rastorize - magic wand - and mask - so that i could have all the parts on 1 normal map - I get these odd artifacts where the edges are supposed to be...

So on their own they look normal - but once I edit them in photoshop they get these artifacts...

I have tried renormalize - after I edit using the nvidia photoshop filter plugin - didn't work

I tried Combining them via - Overlay and half the blue channel of the normal map to try and blend them that way...- didn't work

I have imported it into Max and marmoset to see if the problem is maya viewport related - didn't work...the artifacts are still there...

Is this a compression issue? If anyone has any ideas please help I'm going crazy trying to figure this out

Thanks to everyone

gsokol

what does your normal map look like?

Arthur Ramazanov

Like this so far - separately as in different shaders for each object with a different map - works fine - but when I try to combine them it gets all these artifacts

Arthur Ramazanov

I downrezzed to be able to fit the image on polycount

Arthur Ramazanov

But there are no artifacts in the normal map that i can see

Alberto Rdrgz

your UV islands are super small. Have them take up more space. BIGGER!

EarthQuake

From the shot of your normal map it looks like the gamma got pushed around somewhere along in your process, which would give you the smoothing errors in your first image. Take on of the original bits, throw in over you combined layer and set the blend mode to "difference" if there is ANYTHING but black there, you messed something up.

Really though, doing multiple bakes and combining them manually in photoshop is a really, really bad idea. Its very slow and inefficient. You're better off doing an exploded bake(move each high and low element X number of units in a certain direction to avoid overlapping) annd baking everything all at once.

Arthur Ramazanov

Alberto - I do have more UV islands that I have not composited or baked in...the texture sheet is actually full - just my normal map isn't working so I have been trying to figure out why it doesn't work

Arthur Ramazanov

Earthquake - hmm yeah you may be right about the gamma on the normal map - btw I do not know what you are reffering to - when you say exploded bake? is the the official term for it? what program do you use it with?

Arthur Ramazanov

hmm - when I rastorize the image in photoshop I think it bumps the gamma up

gsokol

By exploded bake, he means that instead of baking certain parts in multiple bakes, you move those pieces apart from each other. That way you bake everything at the same time, but seperately.

Here, check this out:

http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3d-studio-max/next-gen-weapon-creation-day-3-unwrapping-and-texture-baking/

Skip to the 30 minute mark and the guy walks through doing an exploded bake.

Arthur Ramazanov

I guess that makes a lot of sense...- quite genius lol dunno why i didn't think of that...- I wonder though how taxing it will be on memory - if my character is quite large...around 4 million polys...thats why I wanted to do it separated...but I will give it a try

Arthur Ramazanov

thank you very much everyone -

Arthur Ramazanov

yeah - as it turns out the character is actually around 11mill- with all the props

cryrid

Arthur Ramazanov wrote: »

hmm - when I rastorize the image in photoshop I think it bumps the gamma up

Whats the deal with rastorizing it? The only thing I've ever rastorized in Photoshop was text, but never an image (I thought they'd be rastor to begin with?).

Arthur Ramazanov

in CS5 - when I drag an image into photoshop it is automatically set as a smart object - in order to edit a smart object you have to rastorize it

gsokol

guess that makes a lot of sense...- quite genius lol dunno why i didn't think of that...- I wonder though how taxing it will be on memory - if my character is quite large...around 4 million polys...thats why I wanted to do it separated...but I will give it a try

If your having trouble baking it, maybe try using xnormal? I find that its easier for xnormal to handle more complex models sometimes.

in CS5 - when I drag an image into photoshop it is automatically set as a smart object - in order to edit a smart object you have to rastorize it

That is super annoying. I just went from CS3 to CS5 and bringing in dragged images as smart objects is new. Since you brought it up...does anybody know how to make it stop doing that?