I believe UDK will always split uv seams, so you do need to make those edges hard before you bake, because those edges will be hard in UDK. You can try messing with the "Import Tangents and Explicit Normals" in udk whhen importing the model and see if that helps.
Thanks for the write up, EQ. and for taking the time to explore this issue in greater depth. Personally I prefer using multiple smoothing groups/hard edges because it cuts down the gradients, dramatically so in some cases. I also find that using 1 smooth group sometimes leads to weird shading when the mesh is lit in the…
@RashedAlmetrami Then I'd look at fixing the cage. I'm impossibly certain that your cage is the problem if you're correct when you say your UVs and smoothing groups aren't the issue. Or you can upload the model and I can take a look at it in a few hours when I get off from work.
I tried some time ago and either way didn't make a difference for me. So yeah, cutting won't make a difference (unless you're porting your model to Skyrim, in which I had mild success in understanding how it interprets such data correctly again). I used XN to Max, X2 shader.
Normal maps aren't explicitly needed or not needed for any particular type or style of asset. I would think of it this way: Do you have detail that will affect shading? If yes, do you have the triangle budget to control it directly with geometry? If yes, you probably don't need a normal map. If not, you probably do need a…
Gradients are due to the vertex normals being altered in some way. This means you have edges sharing the same SG instead of having a hard edge. Where the gradients show up on the normal map will directly correlate to where the vertex normals have been altered on the model. The more softened normals there are the more the…
Is it bad practice to not use hard edges and split uvs for all sharp edges on a hard surface model? For the most part on this model I used split UVs and hard edges, but for the center part (smoother stone in the picture) I had one smoothing group even though there's a hard edge, and the normal makes it look right. The…
btw, this is probably just camera clipping or some aliasing but to me it looks like its due to the hard edges. you getting incorrect shading on the out edges on both of the hard edge models areas in red should be like areas in green i only bring it up since you care about normal maps so much :D
Hey there First of all thanks to Quack!, Joopson and Earthquake so..... i really have been missing the cage. But i didnt actually forget it, but i didnt "activate" it in xNormal. I was assuming that when i opened the 3DViewer and nothing of the low poly sticks through the cage it would be fine. But i was totally wrong, i…
I think my phrasing of "altering vertex normals" when I really meant "changing from hard to soft" might have been misleading. Here's what I should've said as it seems like we're on the same page. I'm well aware I need to just put this into practice to fully comprehend what I'm saying though. Gradients only show up in the…