Normal Map help

[Emaule]

*If this is the wrong place for this, sorry *

 

Went and hand made a blank Khajiit texture (no markings on it) with the CBBE base. 

Workflow:

- Imported the obj into Max, welded all verts (prevents mesh tearing in Zbrush. sometimes) and exported the obj under the Zbrush preset. Left UVs intact.

- Imported that obj into Zbrush, Subdivided then Dyna-meshed to turn tris into quads, upped the polycount to around 500k

- Scuplted out the High poly I was going to bake off of (used various alphas) and Xported the finished obj.

- Loaded the High poly + low poly base into Xnormals to bake the normal map.

 

Now. for whatever reason, the red channel seems to be overpowering everything and is causing odd problems ingame:

(Both normals have been shrunk down drastically)

The Default Normal for comparison

 

The Baked normal

 

These show the odd effect the baked on is giving me

(Also, I keep getting an annoying seam where the legs meet the body - Cant seem to get rid if it no matter what i do. Any help there would also be welcomed)

Facing the light

 

And Back in the shade

 

Any help / tips / stuff would (hopefully) help me out

[Koffii]

Seems your normals have the wrong orientation. You'll have to remap it in your baking utility. The correct orientation is x+z+y+ if I'm not mistaken.

[PaulGreen]

   Edit, morning, lots of mistakes, oop.

 

    Yup, the orientation is wrong. Probably it's just as stated above, the xnormal setting. There might also be model orientation problems causing it. I know that ZBrush flips some axis by default in the import and export settings. Import both the low-poly and high-poly model into the same stage in Max or Blender and make sure they're actually facing the same direction. Also, import the original .obj export from the .nif and make sure your exports are in the same orientation.

 

   X Normal wants to swap an axis by default I think, like +x +z +y. This is typically correct.. This setting doesn't relate to the model itself, instead to which color channel corresponds to which axis (at least this is the way I think of it). In that way of thinking, the coordinate setting is in RGB order, so

Red should be "side to side" (x axis)

Green should be "top to bottom" (z axis)

Blue should be "front to back" (y axis)

 

 

   The seam is probably created by the welding. You probably DO want to actually use the welded mesh for the map so that there aren't "edges" where the parts meet. To create the normal map in Xnormal, export the welded, non-subdivided (level 1) mesh from ZBrush as the low-poly mesh. I think that'll fix it.

[Andy14]

Step 3 could help

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32084/?

[RomeoZero]

its in baking options in Xnormals as Koffi wrote, for skyrim its x+z+y+

[Emaule]

Dunno what im doing wrong, but xyz are all set for + and everything else matches up. *shrug*

 

However, Swapping the Blue/Green channels in Photoshop kinda did the trick.

 

 

EDIT:

Another problem with xnormals;

 

trying to bake out a heightmap to use as a base to my texture, but it keeps rendering with an odd yellow tie-dye effect the edges

[Koffii]

Dunno what im doing wrong, but xyz are all set for + and everything else matches up. *shrug*

Set it to x+z+y+, not x+y+z+. The order matters, not just the sign.

 

If you've assigned X+ to Red, Y+ to Green, and Z+ to Blue, then by swapping the channels you've arrived at X+, Z+, Y+, just manually.

[Emaule]

I didnt even notice the order xD

[EvilReFlex]

I made you a sample for 3dsmax how it works:  (For 3dsmax 2012+)

 

3DSMax_Skyrim_Bodynormal_Sample.zip