Make sure your UVs are welded(just do a weld with a tolerance of like 0.0001 on your uvs). If you somehow have unwelded uvs that can cause seams.
Baking in one app and then viewing in another may cause seams too if the baker/previewer handle normals significantly different as well.
Also check obvious stuff like making sure the verts along the seam are welded, and that you dont have a hard edge there in the lowpoly mesh that could be causing missed detail in the projection.
Welded UVs don't make sense to me? If they are welded then half of the shell welded down the middle will streak across the entire map as you take the mirrored half and offset the whole thing outside of 0-1 space...
You have to arrange your uv islands in the UV 0,1 square.The dublicated(mirrored for example) can be shifted outside of this square, so that they are on another square but on the some relative position
Yeah I tried this and got even worse seams. Unfortunately they're no snapping tools in both Maya/Max that I'm aware of making the process a guessing game.
There are snapping tools in the uv editor in max. look in the right bottom corner, there is a little button with a magnet on it.
And in the left bottom corner is a button which switches to relative positions, so after snapping you just have to translate it in one direction by a value of 1
I don't realy understand what does it mean by "we wouldn't encounter the problem if we did it right in the first place" I mean... the problem is I don't know what I did wrong when baking normal map.
I followed the digital-tutor's way to render out normal maps exactly the way he did in the video and still have seams on my model. The instructor in the video didn't have this problem and I don't know why. I've tried the ways provided by the replies in this post such as paint 128/128/255 neutral color or try adjusting the color offsets...etc. Though I don't realy understand the theory of the importance of the direction these axises facing, but I followed it step by step.
I get seams on all my models... and I realy want to know how to fix it. This is an old post but I hope my question could be answered.
If it was me getting that error, I'd think that I've got some sort of malware/spyware that's redirecting me somewhere bad... "gypsy..." doesn't sound too good, no offense intended to any gypsy polycounters out there...
Maybe I am being ignorant,
but I dont understand what the problem is, just freeze normals of low poly, cut model in half.
Import full high-poly and half low-poly into xnormal, bake, the end.
but lets say the damage is already done it was baked with unfrozen normals and you cant for some reason rebake ( no time / no access to the highpoly / highpoly got corrupted somehow /some outsourcing guy made the normal map and than rage quit on you and your project taking his shit with him ) than this is is an quick and easy hack that works !
but of course doing a proper bake is ALWAYS the better solution !
Thanks for replies and my map was done in similar workflow. Only difference between that 1-5 work steps is that I baked with overlapped UVs but not have mirrored UVs on next -/+U side of the sheet. So I moved all mirrored UV to the next block, ( I didn't delete half model because that would cause problem to my ztool. Nor I couldn't import high poly to maya because my computer would crash T_T... The specs of my comp isn't realy high) normal mapped again in zbrush and this time I get a map with all washed away details.
to illustrate my problem better here are some screenshots:
Original problem:
UV group shows the 2 UV regions in different color and Z-mapper asked me to choose which one to render.
I chose the right half as the main half being mirrored.
Zmapper normal map bake is not good, (usually not that bad) but it cannot understand the lowpoly normal directions so it approximates it as best it can.
Use Xnormal for bake, you dont need a fast computer, its primary limitation is memory and on my old 1gb win xp system I was doing 1.5million triangle bakes, and I was sure it could do larger.
oh i thought xnormal is a software in maya so thats why i said my computer would crash if I import in high res model. Now I know after googled it. I found this tutorial on internet [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-hoCUjn1wA&list=ULxhkckl-0CUY&playnext=1[/ame] that seemed good and hopefuly my model would get fixed this time. Thanks alot everyone for pointing out software to look for. ^_^
you are welcome looks like the links are not working anymore though ^^ let see if i can fix that i think adam or eric chadwik put the tutorial jpeg on the polycount wiki.
edit: nah i gotta upload it somewhere
*fixed*
And remember kids this is a HACK fix for when the damage is already done.
Always try to do proper bakes first !
I dug a half of the internet (30 different topics!) and didn't find any good solution to this....and then I think I have found it by myself. Is it a common knowledge or I just win the Nobel prize?
Replies
What if you just flipped normals on one side and made a double sided shader? Costly but anyone have any better ideas?
Read up a few posts, you should never have to do any of this stuff to "fix mirroring" unless you screw it up from the start
Welded UVs don't make sense to me? If they are welded then half of the shell welded down the middle will streak across the entire map as you take the mirrored half and offset the whole thing outside of 0-1 space...
I'll like to try this, but can you clear this line up for me? Or anyone else for that matter..
thx
~t
thx I'll try it again.
~t
And in the left bottom corner is a button which switches to relative positions, so after snapping you just have to translate it in one direction by a value of 1
[Edit] worrked like a charm, thx much
~t
I followed the digital-tutor's way to render out normal maps exactly the way he did in the video and still have seams on my model. The instructor in the video didn't have this problem and I don't know why. I've tried the ways provided by the replies in this post such as paint 128/128/255 neutral color or try adjusting the color offsets...etc. Though I don't realy understand the theory of the importance of the direction these axises facing, but I followed it step by step.
I get seams on all my models... and I realy want to know how to fix it. This is an old post but I hope my question could be answered.
This section of the wiki was made just for you.
My link is not working?
Try: http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap?highlight=%28\bCategoryTexturing\b%29#Mirroring
If that doesn't work you can:
1. Click the wiki link at the top of this Polycount page.
2. Then click the Texturing link listed under Art Disciplines on the main wiki page.
3. Scroll down that page a bit and click the 25. NormalMap link listed under "Pages in This Category".
4. Finally click the Mirroring link or scroll down to the Mirroring section on that page.
maybe the internet censorship iron curtain in germany came down a bit more just now ?!
can somebody from germany confirm that we still have access to that site ?!
You might want to run a full scan in Windows safe mode with Malware Bytes or Super AntiSpyware.
Good luck
EDIT:
Full links if you need them:
[noparse]
http://www.malwarebytes.org
http://www.superantispyware.com
[/noparse]
Yup, works just fine for me.
That doesn't sound too good on your side - good luck !
Or maybe it's me and my links?! That would suck!
/runs off to scan PC...
perilith.com is Vito's, and he's the server admin, so maybe there's a redirect problem? I'll ask him.
but I dont understand what the problem is, just freeze normals of low poly, cut model in half.
Import full high-poly and half low-poly into xnormal, bake, the end.
but lets say the damage is already done it was baked with unfrozen normals and you cant for some reason rebake ( no time / no access to the highpoly / highpoly got corrupted somehow /some outsourcing guy made the normal map and than rage quit on you and your project taking his shit with him ) than this is is an quick and easy hack that works !
but of course doing a proper bake is ALWAYS the better solution !
to illustrate my problem better here are some screenshots:
Original problem:
UV group shows the 2 UV regions in different color and Z-mapper asked me to choose which one to render.
I chose the right half as the main half being mirrored.
and this is the result
Use Xnormal for bake, you dont need a fast computer, its primary limitation is memory and on my old 1gb win xp system I was doing 1.5million triangle bakes, and I was sure it could do larger.
That is all.
Thank you.
you are welcome looks like the links are not working anymore though ^^ let see if i can fix that i think adam or eric chadwik put the tutorial jpeg on the polycount wiki.
edit: nah i gotta upload it somewhere
*fixed*
And remember kids this is a HACK fix for when the damage is already done.
Always try to do proper bakes first !
Easy & working:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=124923