Are minimal visible UV Seams normal?

Gazu · May 2014

Hi Community!

Just a little question about UV Seams.
Is it normal that the UV Seams are minimal visible?

I tried booth, Auto Smooth and SG´s to UV Seams. I got almost the same result.
Or is a perfect bake without any visible Seams?
Im just doing some Testbakes for my AK47 that im working on.

Greetings
Gazu

Edit:
This is actually the LowPoly Geometry visible.
So i must change the question: Is it ok that the LowPoly Geometrie is visible a bit when the normal map is applied?
I see it only when im near enough. But anyway, i want it to be perfect

Autarkis · May 2014

Gazu wrote: »

Is it ok that the LowPoly Geometrie is visible a bit when the normal map is applied?

A normal map only affects the lighting information on the mesh, so when you get close, the low poly contour will be visible. You might want to bevel those edges a bit and maybe add a little bit more geometry to get a smoother silhouette!

Gazu · May 2014

Thanks!
I have added more Geometry and now it looks much better from first person perspective.
The Tris Count for the Ak 47 is now at 14k. Still have to Clean it up.

Greetings,
Gazu

Gazu · May 2014

Just another thing.
When i turn On Ambient Occlusion in Toolbag and take it to a strong level and to a low size, the LowPoly Geometrie becomes totally visible:

SG´s to UV Shells, Auto Smooth and Manually doing SG´s. Same Result.
Why?

stevston89 · May 2014

First don't set your AO that high. Second triangulate your mesh before you go into marmoset.

Gazu · May 2014

A standart Diffuse Map seams to solve the Problem.
Im just testing so its not triangulated at the moment.

Gazu · May 2014

Hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr........

Slowly im getting angry about this smoothing groups....
Same here:

Obscura · May 2014

Its the secondary light. Turn it off, with setting it to just scene light. You can do this here:

huffer · May 2014

It could also be a gamma setting: and your normal map gets loaded with a different gamma (is darker in Slate), and you have to pick 1.0 when loading the bitmap (or turning gamma correction off I think).

Gazu · May 2014

Hi Obscura!
Thanks for your help, but that didnt work for me

In max 2015 its under: Visual Style & Appearance.
There i´ve setted it to 1 Light, and i tweaked the Quality and other point points.
But that doesn´t solved the problem

The normalmap is not applied. Its something wrong with the SGs.
But i´ve tried SG´s from UV Shells and Auto Smooth. And when i delete the SG´s from the Straight Faces, the error disappears but then i get UV Seams in the Bake because of hard edges

.....

Gazu · May 2014

Increased the UV just to see that there is no stretching too

Obscura · May 2014

You should change it to scene light from default light somehow. Also, on this new pic, the normals looks "broken". Have you tried using reset xform? If it doesn't work then add edit normals modifier, select all normals, press reset, and set up the smoothing gruops again.

Obscura · May 2014

Also, you should have these edges this way, so short horizontal quads instead of long vertical ones.

Long polygons aren't really friendly with the smoothing sometimes

Gazu · May 2014

ResetXForm doesn´t work. I have added the Edit Normals Modifier to my LP Mesh and selected all Blue Normals that they become red. Then i clicked on rest and collapsed the Modifier. Nothing changed. Then i applied the SG´s from UV Shells via TexTools, again, nothing changed

hrrr...

Edit:
I will give it a try, just a second.

Obscura · May 2014

That element has 1 uv shell, so 1 smoothing group too. In the edit normals, select all normals, press break, and then press unify. Yes its a really lowpoly geo but you shouldnt have a this ugly smoothing...

Gazu · May 2014

Obscura · May 2014

I see that its actually worse now, but I also see that there is still 2 lights for some reason. And the harsh diagonal black line must be because of this.

Gazu · May 2014

Hey Obscura, that with Break and Unify helped out a bit.

And i deactivated now the second Light.
But looks not perfect. Dont know why..

mh...i´ll give it a test bake...

Obscura · May 2014

Put a "control loop" to these places. Yes, they won't change the silhouette, but they will control the shading better. Without this, the current smoothing can give bad result in engines which doesn't have synced tangent basis.Also, if you have these control loops, you can put back the long vertical polygons because then they can't give bad shading, because the control loops are holding it.

Gazu · May 2014

Ok i will do so, but here are the TestBakes:

Gazu · May 2014

And here with Support Edges :

(Mesh exportet once again, new smoothing groups from uv shells, new bake)

Obscura · May 2014

Now put back the long vertical edges too

Because the short horizontal ones are causing some smoothing issues. So it would look like this:

Also, I would suggest to change the tangent basis in marmoset to "default" if there is an option for this (and not just for max and others) because this would show you how your normalmapped model would look in a "simple" engine which doesnt have the synced tangent basis. Then its important to have relatively good smoothing wihtout normalmap too. In this case ith your model, it has one smoothing group, and this can cause harsh gradients, if the mesh doesn't have enough geo. This is why the support loops are needed sometimes. But if you work with an engine which has synced tangent basis, then you can have any kind of ugly lowpoly smoothing, it will looks good.This is my experience. I had enough problem with bad smoothings earlier in UDK, and I mostly solved them with adding enough geo in the most of cases. There is Handplane which can help in the case of UDK and a few other engines, but its probably doesn't support your target engine.

Gazu · May 2014

Back with long Edges and 2 Support Edges:

Breaking the Normals with the Edit Normals Modifier looks fine, but when i click on unify or "Set SG´s from UV Shells" in TexTools, the Errors come back.

Obscura · May 2014

You have the support edges way too far from the supported areas. select the lower loop, and move it down, and look how it changes the shading. Also, because this piece needs only 1 smoothing group, you can add it without the textools, with adding a simple smooth modifier, and setting it to autosmooth, and to a big value.

Gazu · May 2014

Thx

You mean the Threshold with Value?

Obscura · May 2014

Yes.

Gazu · May 2014

Final ^^

Are minimal visible UV Seams normal?

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