Seriously, I think I've watched 30 plus large and small tutorials, read tons of info on it. And I just can't do it. I've tried multiple approaches, at one point literally did the same thing from a tutorial (with the exception of a custom model) and my results always end up like shit.
I get the high poly:
Get the low poly:
Pack my UVs:
And I get shit:
More shit:
I don't get it.....I've tinkered with the cage like 100 times. Tinkered with uvs like 100000 times. Still get shit. Excuse my language I'm just really frustrated because this is the sole reason why every project I try, I say screw it.
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Also, could you post up an image of the mesh with green seams on mesh? You might be breaking the isles wrong I think.
Lastly, what application are you using to bake? What settings? If you're using say 3DS Max, and Mental Ray, you need to bump up the samples for a decent bake, while the most safe and quickest bet would be XNormal.
I've tried Xnormal but it it just gave me problems, maybe I'll try it again for this model. So currently I'm using 3ds Max. I'm not using mental ray. And I applied the checker map and didn't find any noticable stetching. Or at least to me.
Did you apply the latest SP patch for 2012? They fixed some 'little bug' for the projection modifier last I recall.
Also, throw a STLCheck on your high poly and see if there are any issues, and reset both the pivots and reset Xform for the LP mesh.
Which reminds, is the projection modifier behaving correctly with you? When I apply it, I have to reset ALL the values to 0 and then change them accordingly, both Max 2011 and 2012 give me these issues.
EDIT: Did you by any chance set one smoothing group for the whole mesh?
Yes, I have the SP patch for 2012.
I didnt reset XForm before so I just did for the low poly.
The cage is kinda funky. I tried both exploding the mesh and doing it as one and I get the same results as far as how the cage acts on the objects.
And yes for the high poly I highlighted the entire thing and hit "clear all smoothing groups" because I didn't want any faces to smoothly transition into another for this prop. Is that what I did wrong?
For the cage, did you try a raycast instead of a controlling the cage? I usually get clean results in one area for the cage and another for the raycast, so your mileage may vary.
As for the groups, not really, Turbo smoothing should take care of that for the high poly, but the problem could be the LP's smoothing groups, usually when I get too much issues on bakes, I set one bake for my LP to Auto-Smooth (45-70 or 90 angle pending on your mesh and needs) and another one with a single smoothing group and cross check any issues from that area (it helps me locate the problems if there are any in that area).
Sometimes I just take best of both maps and hybrid them.
One that note, one more thing, did you assign a smoothing group for each UV shell, for the LP? Or are there multiple smooths per shell?
A quick idea on what I mean: http://www.svartberg.com/tutorials/article_normalmaps/normalmaps.html
Does your triangulation look something like the left? The image with the normals looks that way, and the wireframe you've shown looks like it would triangulate badly, and give you a wonky normal map.
Did a quick paintover to show some better topology. How many extra cuts on the right is up to you, but I definitely wouldn't go overboard and do one for each segment.
The X's in blue are things I'd suggest eliminating. The piece along the inside isn't doing anything for the silhouette and could be normal mapped in. The pieces on the side also contribute little and take up extra UV space.
Edit: yeah, looking at those side pieces, there's no cuts along the outer border. Also, the left/right side could be stacked to save space, if not made the same length.
Also, I was thinking about deleting those four small side pieces, but I thought that would make it look wayy to flat. But I guess I'll try it and see how it goes. And for this kinda of mesh, would exploding it be the better route to take?
All the bevel shapes, either get rid of them, or make sure they are cleanly integrated with the mesh.
A quick non-destructive way to do this is to add a "turn to poly" modifier on top of your stack, Turn on "Limit Polygon size" and set it to 3 (this means only 3 edges/sides per poly). Then export and then delete the modifier to get back to your nicely quad'ed working mesh.
Of course nothing makes up for not being a sloppy modeler and setting those edges like Per suggested =P But there are some times you want complex polys with a bunch of hidden edges that you don't want to define and in those cases triangulating the mesh makes sense.