The resolution makes no difference. The compression is the issue. Don’t use jpgs for your working/source files. Use almost anything else. This noise is the cause of your normal map artifacts:
The noise is specifically caused by jpg compression. Don’t use jpgs for your working/source files. Use almost anything else.
What pics do they use in the video game industry?
Sometimes they might use a format they create themselves. Files based on DXT compression are commonly used. Like DDS, which has been around for quite a while now. Blender can open these as it happens.
If I’m modding I’ll use uncompressed TGA and PNG then compress them to the proper format. There’s not much difference between them. PNG has a smaller file size generally. But have a look around, as there’s plenty of opinion on which is better.
I won’t waffle on about technical information I don’t fully understand, so I’ll just say that normal maps generally don’t seem to compress well. If your project is for Blender rather than a game engine, then consider going with uncompressed images.
Thanks for the info macser… honestly though the artifacts from the jpegs are only apparent if one was to zoom in real close. I’ve been looking at it zoom out and it’s not really that apparent, so I think I can live with the oddities for now.
Latest update on the “megatron” arm. I was going to take a screenshot of the lowpoly version with normal maps, but unfortunately I’m still having issues with normal maps. Do lowpoly hard edge surfaces need to have a bevel/extra loop just to prevent weird color aberrations in the normal map generation?
As for the design of the arm, I’m not entirely sure about the baroque ornament design. I might have to do two versions of the final render, one with the ornament and one without.
So um yeah, this thread is kind of sad since there hasn’t been an update in forever… I might not have worked on this project but I haven’t forgotten it.
Anyways, I realized now that part of my texturing problem is that I don’t bother doing a UV map check and I am way too dependent on auto tools to create the UV map for me. After resculpting the face I decided to try and take a stab at proper UV layout. Please critique my way noobish attempt;
So my attempt is lame because as once can see, I might have gotten rid of stretching in the front of the face, but now there are stretching in the neck area. Should I just not worry about the stretching in the neck because it’s going to be covered by the hair? Is the front of the face ok?
Thanks for all the help blender artists.
