Normal Map issues

Talbot · Nov 2009

Hey everyone,
Last night I started a to make an oil barrel. This morning I rendered it out and it didn't exactly come out as I well thought it would. So before I go any further... I'm going to ask everyone what I can do to make the normal map better. The main problem areas are the ridges going around the center.

Here are some screens.

Problem

Low Poly

High Poly

Normal Map

So anyone know what is going on?

shadows · Nov 2009

Looks like your smoothing groups are not set correctly.

Talbot · Nov 2009

shadows wrote: »

Looks like your smoothing groups are not set correctly.

Well I tried "auto smooth", "clear all", and applying all polygons to group 1. Nothing worked.

mLichy · Nov 2009

hmmm... you can clearly see it in the normal map, so it's the smoothing on the seams or whatever themselves. For that you may not want to make them all 1 smoothing group though, because it might cause the normals leading into the seams to be too dark.

Try setting all of them at 1, then set the seams as 2, or anything that is at a harsher angled, or greater than like 30 degrees.

kodde · Nov 2009

Talbot> After changing all your normals to group 1, did you rebake the normalmap?

Your original normalmap shows that your lowpoly was hard edges/different groups, and your initial problem was that you can't have hard edges + sewn together uv islands due to sampling issues when filtering texture.

Like I mentioned, you probably just need a new fresh normal map bake with your updated normals instead.

helldiver · Nov 2009

Also check that Green is UP when you bake (or down if you're going to use the Max render). Assuming you're using max.

Xoliul · Nov 2009

Also, you could just ditch a lot of detail in your lowpoly.

Ott · Nov 2009

Grab the low poly. Select ALL of the faces. Clear All for the smoothing and then set them to 1 smoothing group. Rebake. Done.

Normal Map issues

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