Normal bake trouble (monster truck tire)
polycounter lvl 6
I get some odd artifacting and shading on my normal map bake and I am at a dead end figuring why. The highpoly is fairly aligned to the lowpoly as far I can tell + the two floaters (text+wheel nuts) are all covered by the projection cage.
I used the Loop uvw tool to flatten the tracks and and rims. In some places it seems like the highpoly has been projected in a pattern onto the texture, super weird.
Tip much appreciated !
I used the Loop uvw tool to flatten the tracks and and rims. In some places it seems like the highpoly has been projected in a pattern onto the texture, super weird.
Tip much appreciated !
Replies
That error appears because you're viewing your normal map in 3DS Max, and that's a bad idea. And what comes to your UV's, you shouldn't place those more or less straight UV islands into an angle. Horizontal or vertical is the solution.
https://www.marmoset.co/posts/toolbag-baking-tutorial/
But still, you should check your normal map errors in a game engine to see what's actually wrong. Looking at these renders of the tire with normal map applied, or flat textures through image rendering box inside 3DS Max doesn't help you that much.
EDIT: You also need to triangulate your low poly mesh before baking.
And I am going to end up buying Marmoset as I need some better and faster baking tools than max and substance painter + the other things it has. Does Marmoset give you a real-time preview of the ambient/curvature/etc.. maps like it does with the normals in the animation by the way?
Yes, you can preview your freshly baked maps in MT3's viewport with flat shading, which is a neat feature. And naturally you can put those maps to texture slots of the material to see how they behave with PBR as well.