Normal Map Baking Issues

#1

I’ve recently tried making a normal map to smooth my low poly model for a game I’m working on,
I followed this tutorial http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/baking-normal-maps-from-models.php
but my normal map seems to have artifacts… to be more specific certain faces are backwards and some are just a bit off but enough to make the model look worse…
here is with no normal map

here is with normal map

what could be the problem? I’ve used multires for the high poly model no other alterations, I used ‘normals to outside’ on the models. what could be causing the model to look worse after the baked normal map?

I thank you in advanced,
Bombshell

#2

The easiest way to find out is “Send the .blend” may to http://www.pasteall.org/blend/ or here as .zip. Don´t forget to “File -> External Data -> Pack into .blend File”
I look on it.

Cheers mib

#3

I’ve found moving to blender 2.5 helped.
I also tried (as suggested on another thread) using a mostly quad model for high poly and mostly triangle model for low poly while baking.
They both show obvious improvements but I’m still having the little artefacts here and there as well as some of the normal map not fitting to the UV’s properly.

I’m sure you’ll see what I mean in the blend file.
Just a heads up,
theres 3 image files with it because I am still unable to find a delete image option in blender :confused:
untitled (for no reason wouldn’t map to the image)
Carin Base Normal Map.png ( file messed up because blender crashed)
Normal Map (The current normal map and the best looking out of the lot.)
Carin Base.blend

thanks for you help,
Bombshell

#4

could someone review whats wrong or what could help? I’ve got the file in the post above.

#5

Personally I’m not sure what your expecting the normal map to do. The difference in detail between each version of the model is almost nonexistent. AFAIK normal maps are used to add detail, not smoothing. But then again your working with an all tri model here which is way out of my knowledge base.

#6

I know what a normal map is for and what it does, one thing you can use them for is making a model look smoother.
It should stop the shading on the model from being vertex to vertex and have it run along the smooth normal map.
Also the model is actually a quad model, only reason why it is triangulated is apparently it helps when baking maps onto a model (after comparing it does actually make a helping difference)
Still though the model gets those artefacts and it ruins any smoothing effect the map has (may not show in the pictures because it was with 2.4x, but when I used 2.5x beta it showed a lot better.)

I was just hoping someone knew why there were the artefacts.

#7

What you’ve done will always cause those problems because of the way you’ve simply applied sub-d to the low poly version of the model; that results in ‘shrinkage’ at the arms and legs, causing the issues you’re having. Basically you need to make sure that both the low and high res versions occupy the same space as closely as possible.

Don’t confuse a normal map making a model look “smooth” because of the representation of high detail with mesh-smoothing, the two work for entirely different reasons, a ‘smooth’ normal map applied to a faceted model will still look faceted.

#8

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