[ QUOTE ] Would it be posible to use a program like FAOGEN to bake ambocc into the very colors of a highres mesh, and then load that mesh up in xnormal and bake it to the low? [/ QUOTE ] No need to use faogen really. You could use the new GPU AO tool in xNormal. Then use the "bake highpoly base texture in lowpoly" feature…
What happens if you UNcheck the "use cages" option and you set the forward/back ray distances to a very small value ( like 0.001 )? But T-junctions in the lowpoly meshes are bad because they cause tons of Z-fighting problems, aren't they?
This is a really stupid suggestion, but based on your image I'd say: are you sure you didn't export both your high AND low to your highpoly file? Go into the 3d viewer and hide everything but the highpoly, then see if there isn't a lowpoly in there as well.
Ya that's what I mean, it would work if I reset it - but I don't see why it should check it if I just tick it off (I always use the same lowpoly and cage files anyway) - so just wanted to share it ;)
Hmmm I think I could make the cage continous yep. Max uses averaged vertex normal as cage's extrussion direction. The question is... what should I use? If I respect the lowpoly's normal ( as it's doing currently ), the cage will be non-continuous.
I don't know what happened, everything was rendering fine. I tried on a model that baked fine before and now I just get blank normal maps. Edit: Ok, It works now, somehow the normals of my lowpoly got screwed up...
Are you using the auto-normalise heights option? or the manual one? Is your object more or less centered at (0,0,0) with a ResetXform or Freeze transforms applied? Have you setup the cage in a way that covers completely the lowpoly mesh or are you using the Match UV feature?
Show it in the xn 3d viewer pls ( and enable the "show tangent basis" option too in order to see if your UV's are welded )... and render a "Wireframe and ray fails map" to see the UV seams... and post a screenshot with your lowpoly mesh's settings too pls.
Xerilon : this is not a seam problem. It looks like your maximum F and maximum R ray casting in the lowpoly options are too big and what you take as a seam is in fact a part of one leg baked on the other. Try to reduce both values and you should be fine.