Half my normal map is broken

Chase · Nov 2012

I just applied a Flatten Map just to see how this bake would work and this is what happened

When applied to the model it looks like it has a bad camo texture applied. I have no idea what this means

I keep going one step forward and 3 steps backwards with this damn model :poly127: This wouldn't have anything to do with not splitting the smoothing groups would it?

BARDLER · Nov 2012

Could you post some more information? High poly, low poly, program you baked in, ect.

Arcanox · Nov 2012

Use a proper projection cage for this bake. If it's just using a push for the projection cage then the holes in the geometry will make it go inverted at some points.

Chase · Nov 2012

Well, I went back to see what renderer I was using at it was set to Mental Ray. Not sure why, but there ya go haha. Thanks for the reply anyways. Maybe you can help me with the floaters I was using for the normal map though. They didn't seem to work out like I had hoped.

This is what I'm going for

What do you mean proper projection bake Arcanox?

timotronprime · Dec 2012

Does your high poly and low poly occupy the same space?

Chase · Dec 2012

Yep they do. I'm just trying to figure out why the slits on the side, like the reference above your post, won't bake in like how I wanted. I could probably just use PS to get the same result or better yet just model them in, but I wanted to cut down on the tri count this way. Any ideas?

Stromberg90 · Dec 2012

About the floaters what result did you expect?
To me they look like they should.

Chase · Dec 2012

I was hoping for the inverse of that effect. I'm new at the baking thing so I'm not sure I was suppose to have something different. I went about it the way I would for putting in holes. What should I do to get the indent effect?

rollin · Dec 2012

you bake with ? 3ds max?

have you reset xform the low and maybe even the high (but make a backup first)

you should give an offset to the projection .. but that's not the reason why your colors look so wrong..

I've seen similar colors from bakes with totally of transformations .. that's why I would try to reset xform

Of course.. just if this is 3ds max

Chase · Dec 2012

I also bake with Topogun and should probably learn to use xNormal. Noob question, but does one software give you a better bake then another? Thanks for the advice rollin, but I figured out the issue. It was because I was using Mental Ray as my Renderer. I switched it to Scanline and it worked. Now to fix those floaters to get the slits....

Seaseme · Dec 2012

Chase wrote: »

I also bake with Topogun and should probably learn to use xNormal. Noob question, but does one software give you a better bake then another? Thanks for the advice rollin, but I figured out the issue. It was because I was using Mental Ray as my Renderer. I switched it to Scanline and it worked. Now to fix those floaters to get the slits....

It's not the software, it's definitely the user and how much practice you've had. You're going to be able to get decent results from any of these programs if you dedicate some time to learning about them.

Not sure about your normal map. It's pretty impossible to diagnose without seeing your high/low poly.

Did you check all of your face normals?

Chase · Dec 2012

Face normals as in making sure they're all flipped the right way? I made sure all the verts were welded, had no errors when I ran an STL check, reset the xforms. I'll post the high and low poly tomorrow when I get some time.

Half my normal map is broken

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