No problem! Dithering is well explained in this stickied thread: http://polycount.com/discussion/148303/of-bit-depths-banding-and-normal-maps Basically it adds a bit of noise as you convert a texture from 16 bits to 8 bits. This can be beneficial because when that rounding I mentioned happens, you can end up with pixels…
Heya EQ ! Of course, there are indeed circumstances where one might want to "harden all UV edges" - it depends on the kind of asset. And of course not every asset can be made with everything soft - it depends. My point is that there is a popular misconception floating around that tends to make artists believe that they…
"I make sure there are separate smoothing groups assigned to each UV island" You absolutely do not need to do that, at all. Some people do it because their assets or art style just happens to be visually compatible with this brute force approach, but this is absolutely not a necessary condition. By doing so, you simply run…
Hi all! The topic of normal maps seems (pun intended) to come up a lot here, so please excuse me for posting on it again. I recently became a 3D game art student, and I'm mostly self taught at this point. I gave myself the challenge of once and for all figuring out the normal map and AO baking workflow. I'd like to think…
I haven't read the whole thread thoroughly but I ran a find for "dilation" and "padding" and didn't see anything. Are you telling your baker to pad out your textures? Your latest image looks like a bit of the black background in the render is leaking through. Other than that, listen to Pior, dude knows what he's talking…
A bit of ye ol' history: The demonification of the hard edge dates back to the dark ages of poor baking software and worse baking workflows. Basically, before we collectively figured out how this whole baking thing works. In the old days, baking software didn't have an option to bake with an averaged or smoothed cage (I…
Thanks for the information guys! It really helped! I read that thread @somedoggy and I tried it for myself. It doesn't make a huge difference, but the difference is quite apparent if you're looking for it. I can't wait to use it to remove some jagged edges on a higher resolution bake. Here is my final dithered 1k map: I'm…
While this is focused on Toolbag 3's baker, the following tutorial covers all of your issues and then some: https://www.marmoset.co/posts/toolbag-baking-tutorial/ Check out the Basics and Best Results sections. "I never said that it is "pointless to worry about smoothing groups", quite the contrary. What I am saying is…