I’m modelling objects that will be used in an unreal engine 3 powered game ( we are all unprofessionals).
I want to make a low poly container, and im having problems with baking the normals:
The whole geometry of the sides of the container is hard edged: thats the “high poly” im baking it from:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]232207[/ATTACH]
when i bake the normals i get normal maps looking like this:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]232204[/ATTACH] some lines are jumping in the normal map even though they should be straight,
thats how it look with glsl shadin i marked some mistakes in red
[ATTACH=CONFIG]232210[/ATTACH]
I’ve played with the bias , and the distance, couldnt remove them.
I used smooth shading on the active object and this came out ,
i got straight lines but in exchange i received other ugly things (strange patterns + the bottom didnt turn well)
I am also not sure how far normal mapping can replace real geometry.
Should i keep the waves with real geometry or do you think that a flat plane with normal will be sufficient ? ( the players will be able to get really close to the container)
Aw i could solve the problem i went to look how blender actually calculates the normal map, and its getting the information by projecting each points each surface of the low poly in the direction opposed to each face normal of the low poly until they hit another surface , when they hit the other surface they register the orientation of the normal of that the face and its depth.
I allways had my lowres before the high res but its working in the exact opposed way.
Also now i know how to avoid that some faces mapp some of the geometry of the model that i didnt want them to map, you can think it that way:
One face is mapping some data you didnt want to have on that face, so in your 3D view activate your face normals , go to the face that mapped incorrectly , and turn your view until the face normal appears like a dot ( meaning you are exactly normal to the face, then go into wireframe and everything you can see through the face will be mapped into that face)
I illustrated this in this 43 sec video , Is it correct?
thanks i didnt know that, it surely is helpful, does someone know why sometimes blender doesnt bake all the faces?
I mean sometimes i use a simple plane --> unwrapp it and bake normals / textures / AO to it and one of the 2 triangles that are part of the plane doesnt get baked, is it a bugg? is there something i can do to prevent it from happening ( it looks like its appearing randomly)
Also i created an highpoly and a low poly (low poly was uv unwrapped) , i mirrored both (mirror plane was one of the axis z,x or y cant remember) , i spearated all by selection meaning i have 4 objects in my viewport. —> I moved the uvs of the mirrored low poly without unwrapping again so they dont overlapp with the original object.
i baked both low poly and mirrored low poly using for each their respective high poly ( wich are at the exact same distance from the low poly because they have been mirrored) and on low poly i get a clean normal map , on the the mirrored one i get some buggs.
So why are the 2 normal mapps different between the mirrored and original?
For this I don’t have an anwer, unless it’s related to the following…
Also i created an highpoly and a low poly (low poly was uv unwrapped) , i mirrored both …
So why are the 2 normal mapps different between the mirrored and original?
Because when you mirrored you’ve essentially scaled by -1 on one axis, thus affecting the normals. Apply the scale, then to be safe also recalculate the normals.
