Normal Mapping Issue - Zbrush to Maya
Hey Guys,
I really need some help here with this, hoping someone knows how to fix this!! I have tried everything I could find, for days...
So, I made a low res model in Maya, brought it into Zbrush, and made a high res sculpt, then brought back to Maya..And I am getting these weird edges as you can see in the picture and artifacts from my normal maps...I tried adding more faces/edges on the edge and rounding them out, but nothing seems to work...Any ideas?
Thank you!
I really need some help here with this, hoping someone knows how to fix this!! I have tried everything I could find, for days...
So, I made a low res model in Maya, brought it into Zbrush, and made a high res sculpt, then brought back to Maya..And I am getting these weird edges as you can see in the picture and artifacts from my normal maps...I tried adding more faces/edges on the edge and rounding them out, but nothing seems to work...Any ideas?
Thank you!
Replies
Also,I have read something online that you can't have hard edges in normal maps, I tried to make those rounded, that didn't seem to work either...
Thank you!
In the 4th shot here it looks like you've applied sub-d to your mesh, why?
And sorry, I am a bit new to this, what do you mean by applied a sub-d to my mesh? --
I think the view in the image might be showing - if you press 3 in maya, it smooths the mesh, but that gap/stretch on the edges and black specky artifacts show up still on the non smoothed view version. I also in the end, smooth the normals to help it look nicer, and trying to get use to a game environment workflow...
It seems like normal maps from zbrush to maya show up nicely on organic type objects, but I am trying to get it to work on a hard surface object, such as this lantern, basically I am sculpting the edges in zbrush and adding details etc...but need that to transfer over nicely to Maya...
next why dont you try baking with xNormal ?
Also post your UVs, Baked Normal so others have more hint on whats going on.
Ok, so here is my uv map, and normal map. Uv map I made in maya, normal map is from zbrush. I haven't tried xnormal as I don't really know how to use it. But I did try baking in Maya and from zbrush.
I uv mapped the whole model again, and that did help some of the artifacts go away. I also tried using Uv master in Zbrush, on my newly created uv map I made in Maya, and it looked a bit better than the above picture, but still with problems. I still have basically the same problem. As you can see in the attached picture. The close up picture, you can see the weird lines...
A little more information, this is exactly what I did:
- Made low poly model in maya, exported it as obj
- Brought into Zbrush, divided it, sculpted on it, made high res mesh
- Put mesh at lowest sub division level to create normal map
- Exported as a .ma file, which saves normal map, texture map etc all together, imported that into maya with everything plugged in, normal map etc. So its all baked etc and low poly in mayal, like you see in the above pictures.
- As for the actual smoothing, it comes in maya as smoothed, so I have to press 1 to get to the normal boxy low poly version, which the weird lines/stretches look better. I think Zbrush does this by default, so it works properly....for organic stuff etc...?
- Then I smooth normals, and weird lines/stretches look even better, but still not good, as you can see in above image...
And tried everything I could find, to fix this...nothing seems to work...I am farely new to this pipeline, but it works totally fine with organic objects...
Am I missing something? I am open to hearing other ways to do this, has anyone tried to sculpt on a hard edge model in zbrush and bring it back into maya like I am trying?
Your lowpoly UV´s do not compensate the smoothing so they get stretched on the seams. Thats a major problem when your UV editor dont has the ability to create UVs that are optimized for subd-objects.
UVlayout for example has this ability, the uvs may look strechted if you look at them in lowpoly but they look right when the mesh gets subdivided.
But subdividing goes not along with the normal purpose of a normalmap. You mainly use them for games and in games you want to use lowpoly objects and use normalmaps to create the illusion of detail.
Would you please upload a screenshot of the unsubdivided mesh with the normalmap? This should look right. If your lowpoly mesh looks to blocky then remodel it and make the corners softer but don´t do this with subdivisions.
Thanks, that helps a bunch to understand what is going on. I think I sort of stumbled upon that exact thing as a fix. It seems like it is working, for the most part now, with some minor errors, no stretching on the edges, but i need to fix my uv seams...as they are now on the edges.
Anyways, the difference of what i did, was instead of exporting everything as a .ma file in Zbrush, I exported a low poly .obj of the mesh from zbrush, and then brought that into Maya, which didn't come in as smoothed. And, then just manually plugged in the normal map, and then softened my normals, and it looks almost 100% fine. So weird, something so simple basically fixed this.
As for what you said about the UV's well, i used uv master and it seems like it changed the uvs so they are smoother and fit better I guess.
For your question though, what do you mean by unsubdivided mesh? - The lantern in the picture, with the normal map in it, is a low poly model, with the normal map applied to it, and the normals softened. Is that what you mean? I divided my model in Zbrush...?
-Made lowpoly , UVed
-Made hipoly in Zbrush
-Took both HP and LP to xNormal.
-Baked ! [Bamm , Done]
btw, you dont have to put dependency edge for Lowpoly, when you do, it wont be Low poly anymore, right ?
Here it goes, let me know if this helps.
[Do not preview pressing '3' in Maya ]
Cool, thanks! Well, yeah, it does look like I fixed most of my problem, but that looks better than what I came out with! Hmmm, would you be able to tell me the settings you used in Xnormal? I haven't used it before, but I did just get it so I can try it out. Any good videos or tutorials or anything that you know of for what you just did there so I can try to bake my model in Xnormal?
That is crazy it worked, without putting support edges, on the 90 degree edges, very cool!
Thanks again!
for tutorial: You might check
http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap?highlight=%28\bCategoryTexturing\b%29 [everything about normal maps and baking]
http://www.xnormal.net/Tutorials.aspx [How to use xNormal, but even if you just play with it you'll find it out, there is less to do there, just Add,Add, Next , Next Next, Done type]
https://www.3dmotive.com/f101901 [$ | Baking Tips]
So I tried Xnormal, gave me different errors, maybe i need to learn it more, or maybe it is Maya, very cool program though, I love its simplicity! Did you put it in Maya after? Although, my normal map is working the other way i did it. Gonna put some time into Xnormal though, thanks!
Thanks everyone for the help!!