Interlopers.net Forum - Half-Life 2 News & Tutorials

im using xnormal and my maps keep coming out like this,

any ideas?

I don't see anything wrong please provide more detail and preferably pictures of your low and high poly models and also a picture of your low poly with the normal map applied.

Surfa wrote:I don't see anything wrong please provide more detail and preferably pictures of your low and high poly models and also a picture of your low poly with the normal map applied.

sorry bout that,

Ok I see now the problem is best your smoothing splits aren't the same as your uv-splits. You want to apply these changes and re-bake the normal map.

This might help you: http://www.svartberg.com/tutorials/arti ... lmaps.html

Surfa wrote:Ok I see now the problem is best your smoothing splits aren't the same as your uv-splits. You want to apply these changes and re-bake the normal map.

This should solve your problems

okay it is looking better but there is this problem,

the inside of the star looks terrible, should i adjust my smoothing groups?
ive never successfully put together a normal map btw.

Are you baking with a cage of just using an offset. If you are using an offset trying beveling the outer edge loop of the front of the star (on the low poly) and re-baking. The other option is to put the front face of the star in its own smoothing group and break these face in the uv so they are part of their own island.

If using a cage it might be wise to adjust the cage around the star to try and fit it as tightly as possible or apply the above fixes.

If you really want good normal maps, you need to make them yourself.

http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autode ... n-3ds-max/

There's a great tutorial.