xnormal faceting problem

[eldee]

are you sure all of your UV points are welded? sometimes if you're importing/exporting from various apps, the UVs are all positioned in the correct spot but they're not welded together.

that's about the only thing I can think of off the top of my head

[Gal]

yes they are.. i dont get it i cant get normal smoothing from the lowbase. . when i override to harden in xnormal i see that it does drasticly hardens in the normal bake..so that parameter is working when i smooth there. but it still turns out like it mixed hard and smooth edges to the lowbase and rendered that, doesnt happen when i use maya's transfer to bake it. here look:

[jogshy]

1. Are you using the max2obj exporter that comes with the old version of 3dsmax?

2. Did you setup Maya to export the .OBJ smoothing groups?

3. What happens if you tell xNormal to smooth the normals instead of using the exported ones?

4. Are you using the SBM mesh exporter?

5. Render a wireframe and ray fails map. That will tell you if there are UV seams.

6. Are you using a Ts-normal map generated using Maya in xNormal? Some seams can appear because each program (games,3dsmax,maya,etc) use their own way to compute the tangent basis. Like the method differs the pixel shader will perform the TS conversion not accurately so a seam will appear. For a perfect match in Maya you should use the xNormal SBM exporter for Maya so the Maya's TS could be used in xNormal.

7. Are you using a TS-normal map created using xNormal in Maya? Then some seams can appear because the TS is computed in a different way. The solution for this is to ask a programmer for a Maya importer using the xNormal's way to compute the TS ( using the xNormal SDK ).

I hope it helps.

[Gal]

hey jogshy, thanks for the relpy. 1. im using maya not max but i even tried max..same thing.
2. i did try export with smoothing from maya, and i even exported from zbrush with smoothing
3. i did override with xnormal to smooth and i get the same exact result
4. no
5. i have, no uv seams. it isnt uvs
6. no not using a generated map from maya in xnormal, i made a fresh one in xnormal and i get this error.
7. i see the those "seams" inside xnormal viewer without even accessing maya in the process, exported both low/high from zbrush to xnormal, override smooth in xnormal, showed in the viewer and i see these same "seams"

what i think i found is, these seams look exactly like the basemesh with normal smoothing without any normal maps... smoothed normals in high angle edges make this shadowing/breaking/seam effect which is natural for low poly meshes. however, once u bake a normal map from high onto this, this effect should vanish but it doesnt in this case! as if it baked all the high detail normals ontop of this lowpoly normal smoothing and i see both!... this only happens with xnormal baking. ideas?

[NullHypothesis]

The error on the bottom looks like a fairly common problem with the way models are triangulated in the viewport. Maya likes to do that its own way sometimes. If you work with completely triangulated low poly meshes between Maya and xNormal, you shouldn't be seeing these.

The seam at the top may just be an unavoidable fact of life on uv borders. Nothing I've tried works. The best you can do is to hide the uv seams cleverly, and where that's not possible, placing the seams along concave edges can minimize their appearance.

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