Normal Maps

Frankie

Whos managed to bake a normal map from anything with synced up tangents and how?

Closest I got was blender > fbx > xnormal but it still wasn't right and now I cant get xnormal to load fbx :poly127:

Next

mhh i thought that blender > obj> xn works well....but generally this stuff never matches perfectly.
best workflow for me currently is to use editable meshes for baking with projection modifier in max and then using xnormals .SBM format. << gives me the best results in udk , unity, vision and marmoset. though only with multiple smoothing grps and uv splits.

passerby

i use maya with xnormal and use xnormals SBM formate which will export maya's tangest space too xnormal.

than i use fbx with tangents and bi-normals checked off for export to UDK/Unity.

equil

Allegedly they're implementing mikktspace in the next version:
forum.unity3d.com/threads/38781?p=780812&viewfull=1#post780812

Frankie

mikktspace would be nice, although it means rebaking everything

Thanks for the other posts guys but not really after ways to bodge it. That stuff should match perfectly

passerby

mikktspace would be great for anyone that uses xnormal or blender in there workflow

Butthair

I think what matters here is the bake setup for normals. I've done bakes from 3dsMax to xNormals, 3dsMax only, Photoshop with xNormals filters, and Photoshop with CrazyBump.

In any situation, the main thing to be sure off was having X, Y, and Z positive. 3dsMax and UDK both like to have Y-, however, Unity expects Y+, therefore flipping the green channel in photoshop or setting y+ in the bake settings, ensured it would render correctly in Unity.