Weird artifacts in Normal map and cannot get rid of them

Hi all,

Not going to lie, this is the first time I’m jumping into normal maps and their creation. However, I’m struggling to properly create a glitch/artifact free Normal map. I have the following settings currently in my Bake section:

bake_settings

This is my hierarchy:

heirarchy

This is what my scene looks like with the cage as well:

scene

However, when I bake the normal map, it comes out like this:

Which clearly is covered in glitches/artifacts and I know this is not how it’s supposed to be but no matter what I try I cannot seem to make it any better.

How could I improve the bake?

Thanks!

P.S. My blend file is:
ride_entrance_generic.blend (1.4 MB)

If that helps.

Your meshes doesn’t differ very much… almost only in the number of face in the arches so this seem to be correct (Why do you think this are glitches?). Another thing: the cage (if you really need it) seems to be the same (not scaled up in normal direction)…why?

Hi @Okidoki, No you’re correct, the meshes don’t differ too much on this one apart from the arches, however, from the tutorials I’ve seen, any yellow/brown colours in the normal map signifies glitches or artifacts but I’m guessing this is not the case?

I have scales it up previously on the normals (this should be but only slightly) and had pretty much the same effect?

Hi there! I checked your blend file just now, but the meshes are really similar indeed, and I do not really see a normal map to be baked from high onto low poly. Normal maps are either baked from bump, through procedural texturing (from a BW texture, ending up with a normal map),
Or having a high poly model, with a detailed normal map, that you bake onto a low poly object. So, all the high poly detail will reflect on the low poly, since it does not need geometry anyways. But in this case, I failed to find the actual hyper-super normal map in the file. So, what is the actual hi-poly normal map you want to bake? I might have misunderstood you, but I miss the detailed texture, with the wear, and cracks, and all that :confused:

From my perspective and looking in your blend file, you don’t need a normal map. If the high poly was a sculpted mesh, with rounded edges, cracks, uneveness and such, that would be a reason to bake a normal map for the low poly. But in your case, the meshes are nearly the same. They look more like meshes for LOD (level of detail).

@AgentTuron : What do you mean with “hi-poly normal map you want to bake”? You bake from a high poly mesh to a low poly mesh to get a normal map. When you already have a normal map, there would be no need to bake it to another map, right? Did I missunderstood what you mean?

Hi there! Exactly, that is what I meant, I was half-sleeping when I typed that :smile:
So, what I mean is that I cannot really tell the difference, so basically, where is all the detail?

Cage size can also makena difference but in more complex meshes. The cage should determine what is it, that the light will actually see, so a tiny bit of cage should always be kept, it cannot hurt in my experience.