9_14_12 - 9_15_12

I almost have the low poly version of my gun done. Along the way I experienced some problems with baking maps from xNormal.  This was a problem that I've never seen before... After a lot of trail and error and reading countless post on different forums I finally solved the problem.  It seems that most of the information was either old or incomplete.

The problem:  Getting seamless maps from xNormal to Maya.

As you can see, there is a very noticeable seam from the xNormal bake.  To get rid of this you have to create and use a cage instead of ray distance.

Steps to do this from Maya.

1. take your low poly mesh. (no n-gons)

3. indicate hard and soft edges

2. UV it.

3. freeze it and delete history

4 export as OBJ with the following settings.

• groups on
• point groups on
• materials off
• smoothing on
• normals on

5. duplicate that mesh.

6. with that new mesh selected go to lighting/ shading -- then transfer maps

7. change mesh to envelope and adjust side. (note: if this doesn't change size and color, change size to something like 1 and close the window... repeat 5-7 and this time it should change size)

Note: the envelope mesh must be an exact duplicate of your low and be large enough to in case your high poly mesh completely.

8. Freeze it and delete histoy

9. export it with the same settings as your low poly model.

10. open xNormal and import high poly model with default settings (make sure ignore per vertex color is checked).

11. Add low poly mesh with the following settings

• use exported normals
• batch protection

12. right click and browse for cage ( this your envelope mesh)

13. make sure use cage is checked

14. set map size and edge padding to somewhere around 6

15. generate maps!

There still seems to be some small artifacts that appear in the maps.  If you also run a ray distance bake; you can swap out those area in seconds.