Sorry if I was misleading. What I meant was it was intended to be a square pillar with rounded edges, like the cube earlier, but not a super low-poly cylindrical pillar that only has 4 sides. So, making a bevel or chamfer on hard edges instead, in certain situations, can be used as an alternative to the "set hard edge then…
It looks like you're not using a proper averaged projection mesh/cage, looks like you're getting gaps/seams at the hard edges or something. Maybe try with a less complex mesh and make sure you know how to get a seamless bake, and then come back to this? I would say in general, you're probably using too many hard edges, it…
I have a question about Maya's "smoothing groups," ie hard/soft edges, and the set normal angle option. Should I just be using the hard and soft edges and not be using set normal angle? Does the set normal angle count as a hard edge when you set it to a certain degree? I have noticed the set normal angle option sometimes…
From what I understand you want to always use an Average Projection. What this means for xnormal is you need to export a cage. Theres another alternative to that within xnormal but I'm spacing on it. Its a really easy alternative. The reason why you want to use an Average Projection is because the cage will ignore any hard…
So here's what i need help with, you can clearly see how i uv'ed my LP, and where i have my Hard edge (at the split for each island). I have hopefully a good amount of edge padding between each island. Sorry for so many images, just wanted to show you how it turned out for me by pictures instead of explaining. and this is…
Well if you're getting negative 'side affects' on organic models that outweigh the benefits you're getting (Ie the cylinder with the one hard edge on its sides from the uv seam still gets the benefit of less gradients across those two polygons on the normal map) then you'd have to compromise. In the case of an organic…
Ty so much for the info. I used to do all my baking using the method A in the first post. Of course, hard surfaces came out fubar. Right now, I'm using the " C: Hard edges at uv seams, "Explicit mesh normals" projection" and my results are much better, but I cannot use the B: Hard edges at uv seams, "Averaged projection…
Reading EQs thread here about hard edges has gotten me thinking I have over over analyzed it all. I thought the new method was every single uv island, even ones from the same soft normal area (i.e. seam on cylinder side) required a hardened edge. Though you can do this at no cost and only benefit for all models, with…
I don't have time to respond to your entire post right now but just wanted to say, you realize that weapons, vehicles and props are all hard surface work right? Robots, characters with armor and props, etc also have a lot of hard surface elements to them as well. If you do 90% soft organic characters that is one thing, but…