Normal map gradient
polycounter lvl 8
Hey guys, I'm sure this has been answered before (no luck in search though) but I have a question about normal map gradients.
You see, in order to get a good bake from a hi to low poly object in maya, I need to soften the normals on my low poly. But for some reason when I bake from my hi poly, the soft edges from my low poly are baked on my normal map (I think this is whats happening).
It's a simple crate, and the sides should be flat. The final thing looks fine in maya, however I'm not sure I want to show this terrible normal map in my breakdown image.
Thanks!
You see, in order to get a good bake from a hi to low poly object in maya, I need to soften the normals on my low poly. But for some reason when I bake from my hi poly, the soft edges from my low poly are baked on my normal map (I think this is whats happening).
It's a simple crate, and the sides should be flat. The final thing looks fine in maya, however I'm not sure I want to show this terrible normal map in my breakdown image.
Thanks!
Replies
That's a result of the surface normal being interpolated (blended) over the surface of each triangle. There's nothing really wrong with this so long as it looks good in-game, but if you change the topology of your low then you have the best chance of reducing it.
It might be possible to make your normal map look like this through changing your triangulation on your lowpoly (before you do your bake) or by adjusting your normals by hand and using explicit normals.
Or you can remove the effect by adding basically support loops to get rid of the long diagonals, but that's not a great idea.
what's your lowpoly look like? You might be able to clean it up.
Kurt Russel & Bugo, if I change the triangulation of the crate, and have loops, that will increase the polycount significantly. Actually, I could do that for a proper bake, and then retopo after baking...myes. This could work.
Here's a pic of the low poly crate. (wireframe at the bottom)
(PS, that's not the whole gun obviously :P)