What are some of your best practices for baking normal maps?

JFinn_UK · Jun 2012

(that's Blender by the way, aww yeahhh)

I'm never good at this, I've read up on it plenty; I've found it's best to bevel where I can afford to add faces, to triangulate my low poly mesh before baking, make sure faces on each mesh aren't too far away from eachother (I actually have some of this happening here so I know I have some faces to push and pull still), try not to have faces intersecting, move UV islands that are overlaid on each other, etc.

But I get a lot of artifacts when baking from the high poly mesh.

I'm really just looking for advice and wondering what you make sure to do before baking out a normal map which I may have missed (like the top of jukebox there, the island is just blue! XD ). Any help is greatly appreciated

Mark Dygert · Jun 2012

Proper edge padding.
Stack UV shells when you can so you can increase the size of the UVs so they can utilize more pixels.

gsokol · Jun 2012

1: be mindful of smoothing groups. Ties in with proper edge padding, which Mark Dygert already pointed out. If anything is less than 90 degrees, try to keep a soft edge and keep it on the same uv island..if its closer to 90, make a hard edge and split the islands.

2: Bake double res. I know some people opt to use global supersampling, but personally it hasn't worked well for me. Bake double res then size down the bake...resampling tends to soften out the image and gets rid of the "pixelly" look your lines can get. (especially diagonal lines)

respawnrt · Jun 2012

Probably something like this.Keep in mind since the uv island gets more geo you will need to add some support loops here and there since you won't have the smoothing groups/hard edges.

EarthQuake · Jun 2012

You have way too much fine detail modeled into your lowpoly. All the trim, those little buttons etc, let the normal map do its job and represent fine detail. This will make a more efficient asset that is much easier to bake, and will look as good/better(less chance of smoothing errors).

It will also result in a uv layout with less seams(again more efficient) that is easier to texture.

There is no need to model every mesh chunk in the lowpoly the same way you have in the high, its much better to keep your low as simple as possible to represent the base form and silhouette and as seamless as possible to avoid ray intersection issues/needlessly complex bakes.

JFinn_UK · Jun 2012

Thanks for the replies!

Mark Dygert wrote: »

Proper edge padding.
Stack UV shells when you can so you can increase the size of the UVs so they can utilize more pixels.

I mostly did that, although now I've spotted double UV islands, oops

respawnrt wrote: »

Probably something like this.Keep in mind since the uv island gets more geo you will need to add some support loops here and there since you won't have the smoothing groups/hard edges.

Oh yeah, I was kicking myself when I forget to do the mirroring thing, thanks for reminding me, it'll only be a bit more work to get that going. Also, no smoothing groups?

EarthQuake wrote: »

You have way too much fine detail modeled into your lowpoly. All the trim, those little buttons etc, let the normal map do its job and represent fine detail. This will make a more efficient asset that is much easier to bake, and will look as good/better(less chance of smoothing errors).

It will also result in a uv layout with less seams(again more efficient) that is easier to texture.

There is no need to model every mesh chunk in the lowpoly the same way you have in the high, its much better to keep your low as simple as possible to represent the base form and silhouette and as seamless as possible to avoid ray intersection issues/needlessly complex bakes.

Okay thanks for the heads up. How do I tackle faces being too far away also? EDIT: I found the setting for it!

I think I was using values way to high before giving strange results, meaning I had no idea what that setting was for XD

ivanzu · Jun 2012

Use edge split modifier in blender to get smoothing groups.

respawnrt · Jun 2012

Hi there, so take this script sharp from uv isles from http://metalliandy.com/html/extra_scripts.html and it will make the island borders to sharp edge
smoothing groups) automatic ! just what you need.And btw if you have some
non-symetrical details forget about symetry on that front face to make it more
interesting you can let it non-symetric (and mirror everything else), the choice is yours.

JFinn_UK · Jun 2012

Thanks for the messages.

Edge split, now there's a tool I've not used in years! What's it specifically used for if I can use the Y key (split vertices) during modeling? I don't remember hot it works.

Also as for the details being non symmetric, I was planning on adding non symmetric dirt (which is probably why I forgot about mirroring UVs) but in hindsight it'd be a waste for this jukebox, especially with all the detail I want in on the normal map!

Thanks for this script link also, I'll look into this when it's not 2am XD (pinned)

Benton · Jun 2012

If all this does not help, look into Xnormal. But I love Blender, it should work.

passerby · Jun 2012

mrjimmy wrote: »

Thanks for the messages.

Edge split, now there's a tool I've not used in years! What's it specifically used for if I can use the Y key (split vertices) during modeling? I don't remember hot it works.

Also as for the details being non symmetric, I was planning on adding non symmetric dirt (which is probably why I forgot about mirroring UVs) but in hindsight it'd be a waste for this jukebox, especially with all the detail I want in on the normal map! Thanks for this script link also, I'll look into this when it's not 2am XD (pinned)

edge split modifier, it allows you to have hard and soft edges in blender, throw the modifer on the stack, check off marked edges and uncheck angle.

Than start makeing edges selections and hitting control+e and selecting mark sharp.

or us a script to marke all your UV seams as sharp.

JFinn_UK · Jun 2012

Ahh now I get it, thanks

What are some of your best practices for baking normal maps?

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