3DS Max 2008
Im modeling a high detail space ship, and plan on baking it into a low poly model for game engines. For details like panel lines and rivits, I unwrapped the hull, and painted on a standard height map. It looks very good, except when you get in close.
Here you see the high poly model on the left, with the bump map.
On the right, is the low poly target.
When I render close, a seam forms on the panel lines were the UV seems are.
From a distance, you cant see them much if at all. But they are showing up on the normal map rendering. Here is a shot of the bump map, and the UVW's as they lay onto the texture.
This is very fustrating and is ruining a LOT of work. I really REALLY hope there is a fix for this! I have never had problems like this when using bump mapping. Please help.
Thanks in advance,
Gibbage
Posts
I think you should rework you UV's If you keep them as they are, normals will be the last of your problems as you'll end up with a visible seam line all along the object once you try and paint a colour map over that seam.
If that doesn't help, can you show an image of the render to texture settings?
Its perfectly possible to fix that very quickly in a UV editor without mangling the entire projection, depends how familiar you are with UV editing. And I didn't say anything about having less seams, just hiding this particular problem in a panel line, which is very close by to your UV seam and is the natural seam of the model.
It would be sensible to use this to make a natural seam line for the uv and you should habitually look to exploit those features to make a tidier model and your life easier in the long run. A seam like that can hamper the creation of your other maps, and even potentially cause further artifacting; like an ugly unwanted line in some real time engines, no matter how carefully you've painted your diffuse and other maps.