At wit's end with xNormal...

VenomSX · Jun 2019

So I'm trying to bake PBR maps of my high poly mesh (a photo scan of some Cedar wood slats) onto this low poly plane. No matter what I try, the maps come out completely wrong. The diffuse comes out red, and the normal / height maps come out with barely any detail whatsoever and strange artifacts.

Both meshes are in OBJ format.

Here's a screenshot of the two meshes together in Blender: https://i.postimg.cc/43BSsJjR/capture1.png

And here's an example of what I get from xNormal: https://i.postimg.cc/RVQSKDYp/capture2.png

I've done this before successfully with other meshes, after having dealt with similar problems, but I just can't get past this one.

Yes, the low poly has UVs.

Yes, I have selected the base texture to bake.

Yes, the two meshes have the exact same scale, rotation and origin.

Yes, I've tried different ray lengths and used the calculator.

Does anyone know what could be going on here?

FourtyNights · Jun 2019

Calculating and using estimated ray distance for baking is always unpredictable... so that's why we always use a cage (a projection mesh). It's duplicated from your original low poly and inflated to encompass your high poly without intersections, to catch all the information from the HP to LP.

But in this case you're having just a simple plane, and you don't necessarily need a cage for that. Move the low poly plane just above the high poly mesh, so that it's not going through it, and you should get a clean bake.

For future baking sessions, here you can import your custom cage:

VenomSX · Jun 2019

Hey, FourtyNights, thanks for taking the time to comment.

I've figured it out and unfortunately it was a major face-palm moment. My lowpoly normals were the problem. I flipped them in Blender and everything worked perfectly.

Thanks again!

At wit's end with xNormal...

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