Normal maps ruin reflections

dzibarik · Jun 2014

I have a problem with adding scratches to the body of the car I modelled. I decided not to bake the whole shape and go with higher polycount. But I still need normal maps for wear and tear and some minor damage/details. But when I apply normal maps they totally ruin my reflections.

I baked only these small strips

1)Without normal maps

2)With normal maps

What can be done about this?

marks · Jun 2014

Did you try flipping normalmap Y ?

dzibarik · Jun 2014

yes, I tried. it's different but still as bad.

I see that there is no way currently to do damage without baking. I wonder how they damage cars in GTA without using them? Do they decals for that? Here's the thread about issue I'm talking about - http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=95651

Here's another one with a clean bake by Simon Fuchs -http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=94200&

Xoliul · Jun 2014

Need for Speed and Forza do damage by just overlaying some generated or painted damage maps. They don't bake new maps for every single car. I think some of them also involve blending in some tiling crumpled normal maps on damage zones.

Of course if you want to do some unique set-piece car (and not one that needs to fit into a system with dozens of others) you can do it differently.

dzibarik · Jun 2014

Xoliul wrote: »

Of course if you want to do some unique set-piece car (and not one that needs to fit into a system with dozens of others) you can do it differently.

but how? I'm currently redoing my low poly for this and I intended to make some noises in Substance Designer and put them on low poly without baking any information from high poly. Is it possible or will I get errors like because there is no information from high poly? Should I bake from high poly even if my model is like 100 000 tris and I want to do some damage to the car?

dzibarik · Jun 2014

ok, this is f***ing it for baking in Modo. It messes up even simple baking. No way I'm baking there again. I mean if some people found a way to bake there with no problems then good for them but I won't use it even to bake a simple plane. Urgh.

No problems with reflections after baking simple details in 3d Coat and Substance Designer.

I don't why baking in Modo is effed up. There must be something wrong with my setup, I don't know what else.

Farfarer · Jun 2014

How are you baking in Modo? It works well for me.

dzibarik · Jun 2014

I do it like I always do, but it just doesn't work. By not working I mean producing strange results. It looks like it baked ok and captured some details but empty spaces in a normal map - just plain blue spaces - break reflections. I create a layer, change it from diffuse to normal, then I bake from object to texture. I did it with and without a cage - it's the same.

I also noticed that normal maps in Modo are ligther compared to what other apps produce. May be that's the source of the problem.

Farfarer · Jun 2014

It's the tangent basis. Normal maps from Modo won't work in Marmoset perfectly.

The best you'll get is baking a shading normal render output and using that as an object space map inside Marmoset.

dzibarik · Jun 2014

I think Handplane might help then. I'll try it later.

Normal maps ruin reflections

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