Ahh and dont use automatic hard edges. Good normal map bakes require hard edges at UV seams. So you will need to place them by hand or use a script. I guess there are some scripts for max that will create hard edges by uv islands but I haven´t been using max for 2 years.
Hi Wiki, thanks for your answers. I don´t know what you mean with Automatic Hard Edges. I just gave the LP Auto Smoothing Groups. Never had contact with Automatic Hard Edges. Where can i adjust them? I mean this is my first bake in max. Thank you, Gazu
Often yeah, that should take care of it. The one thing to be aware of is you MUST split the UV seam every hard edge you want on your low poly. Some hard edges you might want to add to deal with extreme shading on tht low poly, and they might always make sense UV wise to put a split there in your UV, but you have to do it…
Smoothing groups create hard edges. You see them around each smoothing group as a shading split. So make sure those splits correspond with your uv splits.
Yes. And it should be the only way you do it. Anything else will cause problems. If you need more hard edges (because of extreme smoothing) either split your UV's or add bevels to fix the smoothing.
In the xnormal bake think you fubared the smooth groups on the export of the SBM. The normal map output really doesn't match up to what your groups are as you shown in 5. Not to mention the groups are a bit wrong looking at the UV... particularly the pump grip. there are hard edges all over that but it's only a few UV…