Why does Maya bake better normal maps than xnormal for me?

Travis C · Feb 2016

I don't know why, but for some things my maya bake turns out better than the xnormal one. Specifically for the parts where there are hardened edges with the UV seams. The hardened edge comes out alot harsher when baking in Xnormal. I did also use a cage, which I imported for xnormal. I also made sure that "normals" was ticked when exporting my obj mesh from maya.

Can anyone tell me what I may be doing wrong? I thought xnormal was supposed to be flat out better for doing bakes.

xnormal bake. the UV seam with the hardened edge is alot more obvious:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/4b/wu9ar9atfvpm.png

maya bake. UV seam is alot harder to see:

wireframe:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/bf/nk5klqv50wi1.png

m4dcow · Feb 2016

It's because Maya's baker is synced to Maya, so it will always look good in Maya.

Stranger · Feb 2016

Yeah M4D is right, its the same with max, modo, etc. i think hand plane though converts maps?

huffer · Feb 2016

I don't think this has anything to with synced normal maps, it's just that Maya handles edge padding differently, here is what I discovered, but I haven't found any fix so far. Both in 3dsmax and xnormal I get the same issues with hard edges; but they're generally acceptable, if the resolution is small they'll be more noticeable.

But overall, xnormal has some advantages alongside issues, the same as the Maya baker, I wouldn't say one is better than the other.

peanut · Feb 2016

I find Maya to be an incredible baker. Sometimes the results surpasses xnormals on my end.

m4dcow · Feb 2016

huffer said:

I don't think this has anything to with synced normal maps, it's just that Maya handles edge padding differently, here is what I discovered, but I haven't found any fix so far. Both in 3dsmax and xnormal I get the same issues with hard edges; but they're generally acceptable, if the resolution is small they'll be more noticeable.

But overall, xnormal has some advantages alongside issues, the same as the Maya baker, I wouldn't say one is better than the other.

I see what you mean after reading that other thread and doing some tests it is subtle but still an issue none the less.

I did a test where I rendered in maya at 1k with 16px fill texture seams, then in xNormal at 4k with 64px edge padding and then lastly just regular xNormal at 1k 16px edge padding.

So I guess Maya does something different with it's fill texture seams option than other bakers, but if you can't live with the issue in xNormal try baking at a higher resolution and then re-sizing. Possibly baking OS Normal in Maya with it's fill texture seams and running that through handplane might be an option?

ActionDawg · Feb 2016

The best advice I can give is simply to bake for what looks best in your target engine, and always bake synced.

That and bake in 16-bit and have the most samples per pixel possible (like the supersampling example above). My personal preference is Substance because the way it handles edge padding is amazing and its synced to Mikk T

Why does Maya bake better normal maps than xnormal for me?

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