Mirroring normal maps?

[wannabeartist]

Hi guys,

I'm having trouble getting proper normal maps from xNormal, when I have opposite sides of a model sharing the UV space - I really thought that I had done this before without any problems, but now suddenly it doesn't seem to work.

So tell me, should it work? For example, you have a pair of shoes and you want them to use the same UV space - is it possible? I'm getting one shoe ok and the other with flipped normals (obviously)

Am I missing something or was I just imagining that it should work?

[EarthQuake]

Offset one side exactly 1 unit in uv space, this will ensure the texture still lines up, but prevent any errors from overlapping uvs when baking.

[Psyk0]

Did you move the overlapped UV's?

To prevent the mirrored UVs from causing overlaps or baking errors, move the mirrored UVs (http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap#UVC) out of the 0-1 UV space, so only one copy of the non-mirrored UVs is left within the 0-1 square.

http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap#Mirroring

Disregard if you did...

[wannabeartist]

thanks guys,

I didn't remember that - but now I moved them.

But my normals are still wrong - the light is "mirrored". I moved them in the U axis -does it matter which axis you use?

[EarthQuake]

It would help to know what software you're baking in, what software you're viewing in, what type of normal map you're baking(must use tangent for mirroring), etc.

[wannabeartist]

Yes, of course...

I'm baking with xNormal and viewing it in Max. It is a tangent map.
The actual destination is Unity3D, but I haven't taken it there yet.

[wannabeartist]

Aah.... now that I took it to Unity, it seems fine :)