Wierd lines on normal map after bake (xnormal)

grimsonfart · Aug 2014

Hi.

Im having this wierd problem baking out my normal map in xNormal.

Here is a picture.

I don't understand why this is suddenly happening, never happened before, and im doing the exact same thing i have done a ton of times $:\$

sargentcrunch · Aug 2014

grimsonfart · Aug 2014

sargentcrunch wrote: »

How does it look on your model?

Just as you would think looking at the normal map. Seams clearly visible

sargentcrunch · Aug 2014

grimsonfart · Aug 2014

Just a quick note, no problems baking the normals out in Mudbox.

sargentcrunch · Aug 2014

grimsonfart · Aug 2014

sargentcrunch wrote: »

Are you using a cage in either of the apps? If not, maybe the rays weren't casting far enough in XNormal. Pictures of your meshes would help solve the problem.

Give me a sec il post them. But i did try both a custom cage and using the ray casting calculator (for 2+ minutes). Meshes are exactly the same size.

Topology is clean on both.

sargentcrunch · Aug 2014

Shrike · Aug 2014

you need to make your UV splits where your smoothing splits are, else you get those seams

that pic you posted, the right object is having very bad smoothing splits, every face one split is surely not how you want to unwrap, but also extremely costy on the vertices, as every polygon is having 4 vertices there because they stand alone.

On your pic of the normal map, your smoothing says "cut there" but your
uv is not split where it wants to cut, so you get this seam.

sargentcrunch · Aug 2014

grimsonfart · Aug 2014

Thanks alot for your help guys. I looked a bit further into it, and found out it only happens when i use mudboxes retopology to create my lowpoly mesh. Using Meshlab i never get things like that for some reason.

grimsonfart · Aug 2014

Shrike wrote: »

you need to make your UV splits where your smoothing splits are, else you get those seams

that pic you posted, the right object is having very bad smoothing splits, every face one split is surely not how you want to unwrap, but also extremely costy on the vertices, as every polygon is having 4 vertices there because they stand alone.

On your pic of the normal map, your smoothing says "cut there" but your
uv is not split where it wants to cut, so you get this seam.

How do i know where my smoothing splits are? Could you elaborate?

grimsonfart · Aug 2014

Ugh, even after using textools and using smoothing groups from uv shell i still get the problems. And looking at my LP model in Max, it looks like the uv splits are where the smoothing splits are (almost like a seam where my uv's cut but otherwise smooth in between, or is that bad?)... this is so **** anoying. cant do sh1t with all these problems im getting all the time

sargentcrunch · Aug 2014

grimsonfart · Aug 2014

Alright here you go.

lowpoly - https://mega.co.nz/#!Q9xymaaA!pncwhQwuEbsZ6jKzJIgCv9KVRj9QaAKgOL8Jzsr6mGI

highpoly - https://mega.co.nz/#!BpJVyZRR!J2NHzjeWx6STlb1H71yjQK6JZ4bBkSlUj-ZADHyTxfU

sargentcrunch · Aug 2014

grimsonfart · Aug 2014

sargentcrunch wrote: »

No seams at all for me, I literally just dropped your models into xnormal and pressed generate maps.

What are you baking in? I heard Mudbox isn't the best at baking (not sure if thats true though).

Wierd. Must be something wrong with my package. I tried both Mudbox and xnormal, both gave the same results. But yeah, Mudbox is not the best normal map baker out there. Going to reinstall windows today anyways (its a mess, and im getting some wierd problems in PS). Im going to report back when im done.

Wierd lines on normal map after bake (xnormal)

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