Normal map seams question
polycounter lvl 4
Okay so I know there is probably an easy fix out there for this but for the life of me I cannot figure it out. I originally baked out my low poly with a cage inside of xNormal and everything turned out okay. In Mayas viewport it looks like it worked.
But I imported my mesh into Substance Painter to start texturing and this is what I get:
The problem is that I only baked out half of the LP and of course I get a nasty seam down some of the pieces. I didnt think about this since Ive never experimented with mirrored UVs before. Naturally I would like to try and fix this.
I read a thread here which deals with the same issue as Im having. Theoretically it makes sense but Im pretty sure Im just not doing something right. So I duplicated my LP and moved my UV shells one tile to in the negative U.
I then tried rebaking with my entire LP visible with a new cage but I still get that nasty seam down the middle. In fact it looks identical. Is there something Im missing or nor doing correctly here? Help would be greatly appreciated!
But I imported my mesh into Substance Painter to start texturing and this is what I get:
The problem is that I only baked out half of the LP and of course I get a nasty seam down some of the pieces. I didnt think about this since Ive never experimented with mirrored UVs before. Naturally I would like to try and fix this.
I read a thread here which deals with the same issue as Im having. Theoretically it makes sense but Im pretty sure Im just not doing something right. So I duplicated my LP and moved my UV shells one tile to in the negative U.
I then tried rebaking with my entire LP visible with a new cage but I still get that nasty seam down the middle. In fact it looks identical. Is there something Im missing or nor doing correctly here? Help would be greatly appreciated!
Replies
If you want to properly view a normal map with a -Y swizzle in Maya, go to your mesh's shape node in the Attribute Editor, find the Tangent Space section, and choose Left Handed.
The seam is definitely smaller but still there. I exported using FBX with a hard edge around the UV seam but should I smooth out the whole mesh? It didn't seem to make a difference when I switched to OpenGL either. Could it be from the bake itself? Do I need the cage to be smooth or something? Here are the settings I used for baking the LP as an FBX:
And here are the settings I used to export the cage (it's an SBM format):