Melior Type 1

[Lollito_larkham (Laurent_Destailleurs)]

Hello !

I’m here with a wip to get better results with my baking and shading (smoothing groups), and improve the Blender/Quixel/unreal 4 workflow.

This is the first time i work with this workflow, and i have some troubles when passing from a program to another.
Smooth shading troubles, baking (inside blender) troubles, and coherence troubles with the final result inside Unreal.

Hoping to get some useful feedback.

So, here is the high poly model i want to produce a low poly from.

A rough render (precedural shader made 100% inside Blender+Cycles)

All procedural shaders, rendered with Cycles. 100% blender

For the low poly i did a retopo in 3 parts

http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=131538

http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=131539

And
http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=131540

The troubles start now with the baking and shading option inside blender.
If i activate autosmooth i have seams in the baking result, and if i don’t activate it, i have shading issues in the normal map.
So how can i bake properly if i have to remove the autosmooth ?
Without autosmooth and hard edges set by hand, the mesh looks horrible and the normals baking is wrong.
http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=131547

Unreal screenshots (textures made with Quixel)
http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=131548

http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=131549

http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=131550

You can see some shading issues are present inside Unreal, and also inside Quixel where i made the textures that you can see on Unreal screenshots.

Well, i will continue to explore the workflow to have better results, and will accept any constructive feedback.
Thanks for reading !

[Lollito_larkham (Laurent_Destailleurs)]

Hello,
despite many diffrents attempts with different settings, i don’t success to get good normal maps baking and smooth shading in final result (unreal engine and quixel when making textures).
I don’t find the good workflow beteween blender and quixel/unreal engine smooth shading modes.

Here some screenshots from Quixel.
There are some dark areas where the normal map is wrong.
If i assign hard edges inside blender in edit mode and activate autosmooth, the baking result contains unwanted seams.
So i bake the normal with my model in smooth shading and autosmooth off.
Then the result is wrong once inside Quixel or Unreal.
The normal map baking result works only if is stay inside blender and don’t activate autosmooth.
I’m baking from selected to active (high to low poly).

Well, may be it is topology ?
I will redo from start ?

Any advice or link to tutorial appreciated.