I just baked a segment with edges given the 'harden edge' option in maya and the normal map came out much better, im slightly confused however but after watching some videos if I understand correctly I should smooth all the edges except the hard ones? I was under the impression you wanted to smooth the entire mesh.
Hi! Checking the lowpoly in Blender with the Normalmap applied, there are similar shading errors as you show. How does the lowpoly + Normalmap look in Toolbag? Did the shading of the lowpoly change by any chance since the bake? That said, I agree with gnoop on improving the lowpolys' shading. Hard edges at steep angles…
Ive changed the smoothing to be hard edged on steep angles and I think the whole thing looks pretty good now, or atleast alot better than it did before. with metal texture:
I suppose you could select edges by UV seams and set them to hard which should remove some mayor shading gradients. Then check if the result is improved when baking anew.
Yeah there are areas which are quite broken and im not sure how that happened tbh, but those areas are small and unnoticeable, unless there are areas that are broken that I dont know about. I just wanted to get it over with because this project was annoying me so I chose to ignore those areas. You mentioned my uv island…
Unless im confused, wouldnt hardening the edges make it so less information is acquired when baking? I was under the impression you want to smooth the entire mesh so the normals dont miss any areas.Marmoset bake:
Your problem is on modelling side. I see same huge shading gradients on your mesh too. And while normal map can theoretically counter-measure them in a perfectly "synced" workflow you would never get it looking perfectly right in actual game anyway . 8 bit normal map with compression just doesn't have enough precision for…
using smooth normals works when everything is perfect but at no other time. in practice, if the model looks good in an untextured, shaded view then you're in a good place to start baking. it's not a guarantee that hardening all your shell edges will look the best but it's a good starting point
Smoothing entire mesh works ok for organic subjects or characters. Anything boxy shaped or just having close to 90 degree angle in between polygons would need either split/hardened edge or a geometry bevel/ chamfer with vertex normals slightly rotated to be perpendicular to adjacent bigger faces . It's called face…