Hey guys. I’m new to the forum and was wondering if anyone has had similar issues with generating a normal map in Mudbox, and applying it to their low-res sculpt…

OK, here you can see my final, hi res sculpt in one image, and my low-res sculpt with the Normal Map assigned to it in the other image. My question is this: Why is the Normal Map, which is mapped to my low-res sculpt, failing to effectively assume the appearance of my hi-res sculpt???

Any tips, or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

-Brandon

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looks like your model normals wernt smooth before the bake - nice model by the way, looks ace

What I tend to do is after I’ve made my high poly model I’ll export a lower subD level of the high-poly model and use it as a guide in maya/max and tweak my base mesh so it now better resembles the high poly shape then UV map it and bake.

Thanks for the reply and compliment. Yeah, the strange thing is, is that I did what you suggested. I brought my higher res model to a lower res using ReConstruct SubD in Zbrush, then used that as my low-res. Hmmm.....

-Brandon

did you make sure your edges were all smooth grouped? it just looks like thats the problem

What software are you using to display your normal map? This makes a big difference as to the shaded result.

Hey Marcus. In Maya, are you talking about going to Normals>Soften edge. If so, yes, I did that…

I am using Maya, switching from the Default Quality Render, to a High Quality Render. In the class I’m taking which I sculpted this for, it worked fine for the rest of my peers.

I use maya 8.5 aswel, the transfer maps is very good and easy to use.

Make sure that all your bake settings are correct, I find in the ‘Maya Common Outputs if you set your map width and height to 1024 and set your sample quality to ‘High 8x8’ ity comes it really nice.

Remember, if you need to tweak your ray casting cage you can make this visable in the target mesh section of the Transfer Maps section. Theres a drop down box titled ‘Display’ which at default is set to Mesh but you can also show the envelope or even both.

Like I said, I’ve used Doom3’s render bumb command line and Xnormals aswell and I think maya is spot on. It has a tendancy to kick the green channel out inverted so you need to invert your green channel in photoshop or other 2D tool.

This is my last normal mapped model from maya.
http://www.blacktreeuk.net/3d/game_slug2.jpg

just some handy tips there.