Weird light artifacts after baking and exporting

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  Fabi_G veteran polycounter

  Sep 21 2025

  Hi! Blender has a Triangulate modifier (keep normals option to preserve shading), which makes it easy to work with quads and triangulate on export. I recommend triangulating to ensure topology (and as a result mesh shading) is the same across softwares.

  
  

  Since you shared UV layout, I'll note that there's a lot of unused space and lots of UV borders/ strips not being straightened, likely leading to aliasing along UV seams.

  
  

  There might be other things contributing to the final result (hard edges without UVs is a common one). If you want a thorough look, you need to share files. 

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  zzkkll

  Sep 22 2025

  Fabi_G said:

  Hi! Blender has a Triangulate modifier (keep normals option to preserve shading), which makes it easy to work with quads and triangulate on export. I recommend triangulating to ensure topology (and as a result mesh shading) is the same across softwares.

  
  

  Since you shared UV layout, I'll note that there's a lot of unused space and lots of UV borders/ strips not being straightened, likely leading to aliasing along UV seams.

  
  

  There might be other things contributing to the final result (hard edges without UVs is a common one). If you want a thorough look, you need to share files. 

  Hi! thanks for your answer, yeah i did as you said and the problem seems to be fixed, though it's really weird to me that every Blender to Substance tutorial doesn't even mention to triangulate the mesh i'm supposed to be baking and texturing, and after importing their texture it has a perfect lighting/shading and honestly i don't know what i'm doing wrong, i'm literally following every step lol
  
  I'm willing to share files if necessary though.
  Also about the UVs, yes they are messy, but the left UVs are back faces mostly so i didn't really care about them for now

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  Fabi_G veteran polycounter

  Sep 22 2025

  Hi! Nice that you were able to fix it. Many tutorials leaving this out is unfortunate. Whether the issue becomes apparent or not depends on the specific geometry. If this had happened with the tutorial mesh, they would have to deal with it as well. You could use the Polycount Wiki as additional reference: Texture Baking

  
  

  I understand about the UVs. I suppose if you wanted to optimize UV/ texture space, you could add some generic tiles to your texture atlas, to which you can then map such UVs (outside the 0-1 space to prevent overlapping bakes/ world projections).
  
  No need to share files If you say the issue has been solved. Good luck with your project
  

  
  

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  zzkkll

  Sep 22 2025

  Fabi_G said:

  Hi! Nice that you were able to fix it. Many tutorials leaving this out is unfortunate. Whether the issue becomes apparent or not depends on the specific geometry. If this had happened with the tutorial mesh, they would have to deal with it as well. You could use the Polycount Wiki as additional reference: Texture Baking

  
  

  I understand about the UVs. I suppose if you wanted to optimize UV/ texture space, you could add some generic tiles to your texture atlas, to which you can then map such UVs (outside the 0-1 space to prevent overlapping bakes/ world projections).
  
  No need to share files If you say the issue has been solved. Good luck with your project
  

  
  

  Hmm, maybe i've skipped information. I meant that every tutorial i've watched the mesh is never in tris, like, in the video you can see the topology the entire time and ppl don't tend to triangulate it, then they export it back (mesh still in quads) and the shading looks fantastic. That's why i'm hitting my head against the wall basically haha. I want to work with quads because it's cleaner for rigging deforming and other things, but it seems like the only way to make it work is with tris.
  
  I tend to UV unwrap in blender, then export .fbx from high and low poly (quads) then take everything into Substance (OpenGL) and then export new textures then import into blender. That's the workflow i've seen people do in many scenarios
  

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  stray keyframe

  Sep 22 2025

  zzkkll said:
  ...in the video you can see the topology the entire time and ppl don't tend to triangulate it, then they export it back (mesh still in quads) and the shading looks fantastic

  There is a checkbox to Triangulate on export without using a modifier. So if "bake-mesh" topology was triangulated in those tutorials you might not see it unless it was specifically shown in Substance Painter.
  The triangulation result should look the same way as Blender presents mesh by default (I think?). So when you apply textures baked with triangulated mesh on original quad mesh it should look correct. While in Blender that is.

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