Normal Map Baking Problems With Cage Polycount I've recently started working with normal maps and already spent quite some time with the whole normal map baking topic. today i found out about cages and how to use them, but this is where my problem comes in. This means a normal map baked in one application probably won't shade correctly in another. artists must do some testing with different baking tools to find which works best with their output.
Normal Map Baking Problems With Cage Polycount Throughout the years, i have been trying to understand normal mapping and the problems that usually appear when working with them. most explanations i found were usually too technical, incomplete or too hard to understand for my taste, so i decided to give it a try and explain what i gathered so far. You should avoid changing the uvs after baking the normal map, because rotating or mirroring uvs after baking will cause the normal map not to match the tangent basis anymore, which will likely cause lighting problems. There are a variety of things you can do (add more geometry, split edges in the cage, manually tweak the cage mesh in max). however unless you're really hurting to meet a particular geometry limit, simply fixing it in the model is the best solution. From what i have discussed with 3ds max users, a cage is just the same mesh that your low poly pushed away in the direction of the normal of the faces. you can however break the projection by making hard edges with the help of different smoothing groups.
Xnormal Cage Baking Polycount There are a variety of things you can do (add more geometry, split edges in the cage, manually tweak the cage mesh in max). however unless you're really hurting to meet a particular geometry limit, simply fixing it in the model is the best solution. From what i have discussed with 3ds max users, a cage is just the same mesh that your low poly pushed away in the direction of the normal of the faces. you can however break the projection by making hard edges with the help of different smoothing groups. There are certain types of topology that require a hard edge in order for the vertex normals to properly align. the most common is a 90 degree corner edge. you can either bevel it and keep it soft, and also one uv shell, or you will need to make it a hard edge, and cut the uv shell. Judging by the gradients in the normal map it looks like you have no smoothing groups set up and are baking with one smoothing group. the error that is showing up could be a projection issue and you might need more geo to solve it. What you need here is a combination of cage bake and offset bake. the cage bake for the edges of the object to appear good and the offset for the details that sit on the flat surface of the object. I've been following this tutorial on current gen game art workflows and now i'm stuck on baking the normal maps for my low poly model. i've followed the tutorial but can't seem to get it to work correctly, i'm using max 9 where the tutorial uses 2009 but i can't see that making much of a difference.
Baking Normal Map Problems Polycount There are certain types of topology that require a hard edge in order for the vertex normals to properly align. the most common is a 90 degree corner edge. you can either bevel it and keep it soft, and also one uv shell, or you will need to make it a hard edge, and cut the uv shell. Judging by the gradients in the normal map it looks like you have no smoothing groups set up and are baking with one smoothing group. the error that is showing up could be a projection issue and you might need more geo to solve it. What you need here is a combination of cage bake and offset bake. the cage bake for the edges of the object to appear good and the offset for the details that sit on the flat surface of the object. I've been following this tutorial on current gen game art workflows and now i'm stuck on baking the normal maps for my low poly model. i've followed the tutorial but can't seem to get it to work correctly, i'm using max 9 where the tutorial uses 2009 but i can't see that making much of a difference.
Baking Normal Map Problems Polycount What you need here is a combination of cage bake and offset bake. the cage bake for the edges of the object to appear good and the offset for the details that sit on the flat surface of the object. I've been following this tutorial on current gen game art workflows and now i'm stuck on baking the normal maps for my low poly model. i've followed the tutorial but can't seem to get it to work correctly, i'm using max 9 where the tutorial uses 2009 but i can't see that making much of a difference.