problem exporting normal maps to maya2016

[Lumberjack]

Hi,
I´m having a problem with the converted normal maps in Maya.
I painted the height channel and exported with openGL settings but in Maya the different UV shells seem to get different light information, the seams are visible and some surfaces turn black.

The normals of the mesh were smoothed when I imported it into SP.

This is how it looks in SP:
http://s28.postimg.org/babb67eyl/image.jpg

And so in Maya:
http://s28.postimg.org/x87rzztz1/Maya.jpg

Can anybody please help?

[Lumberjack]

I also flipped the red and green channel in photoshop but it didn´t really help :(

[Lumberjack]

out of desperation I just did a testrendering with mental ray and the normal map looks perfectly fine there, only the viewport seems to have a problem with that map (even though other normal maps like those exported from zbrush also look fine in the viewport.

But in the end it is not really a big deal as long as the rendering looks good.

Anyone an explanation for this?

[僕の名前 (仮)]

Smoothing groups maybe? I dont know.

[Lumberjack]

unfortunately nope, no smoothing groups whatsoever, I also tried it with smoothing groups but nothing changed, really weird behaviour.
everything is freezed, history is deleted, a totally clean scene :/

[Lachance_-]

I know you said you tried flipping the Y Channel but still try to switch from OpenGL to DirectX just to see if it changes something

Also it might be related to your Export settings

[Lumberjack]

@lachance thx for the suggestion, I already tried it after looking through the forum in steam and the online SP forum and unfortunately it also didn´t help...what I find interesting is that if I just use the height map and plug it into the maya bump node it looks fine in the rendering AND in the viewport, only the normal map exported from SP causes this random viewport look.

I thought maybe my maya is buggy or something so I did a quick test with zbrush and xnormal and the normal maps exported from there also look fine in the final rendering and the viewport.

it is just really really weird but as long as the final rendering looks fine it is no game breaker :)

maybe it is a problem with the model or something, after all this was the first project I used SP for in almost a year, it is totally possible that I ♥♥♥♥♥♥ something up while exporting the mesh to SP.

the only special thing about this creature is that I had to make 3 seperate textures for it, it gets very close to the camera and a single texture wouldn´t have been enough, that was actually the reason why I decided to give SP another try (I couldn´t do it in Zbrush because I couldn´t subdivide the mesh often enough to do a decent polypainting).

It could be that maya just doesn´t like applying normal maps to seperate UV tiles and just flips out in the viewport because of that, I would have to test this further to find out.

[Raswayare]

Hi Lumberjack

Could it be that you have set your color management wrong for this map?

I set up my own color management rules and conditions in the preference window knowing my naming scheme and totaly forgot about it when i opened my wifes files the first time (she uses a different scheme for work) and it looked kind of like that.

Color correcting the normal map by accident turns out pretty bad :)

Kindly,
T

[wesm]

Hi Lumberjack,

It looks like it could be an issue with the mesh normals. Is the normals set to locked? Mesh Display>Unlock normals then choose Soften Edge.

Also as suggested above, it could be that the normal map color space is set to sRGB.

Cheers,
Wes

[Lumberjack]

thanks for the suggestions guys, because the rendering looks good I had to start the next asset and wasn´t able to look further into the issue but as soon as I have some spare time at work I´ll definitely try it out.

thanks again :)