heh really fast reply, thank you. I'll try it tomorrow

It worked! Thanks : )
Btw HP recommended this one http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/aut...ap-in-3ds-max/ by Racer445. It explains pretty much everything.

I have a noob question: I heard a lot of people say that intersecting high- and lowpoly models dont matter for baking. But when I bake the lowpoly seems to "trim" off parts that are outside the model. I am using mayas transfer maps tool.

do you have a cage built around the meshes?


EDIT; just go here to understand normal mapping:
http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap?highlight=%28\bCategoryTexturing\b%29
and here for your issue, just look towards the bottom of the article:
http://www.paultosca.com/makingofvarga.html

thanks for the links

Hi, I'm new on the forum and also a little in the 3d (1 and a half year since I began to use Maya) and I have some questions I can't find. I want to know how to bake good Normal Maps with meshes that have sharp angles. I have read that you can bevel the edges of the sharp angles, make one shooting group with all the low poly mesh, use cages and the calculating tool for bake the normals. I have read the most of the post about normal mapping today and I have try all the methods and the best result I have gotten is this:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...malsrampa.jpg/

These are the low and high poly meshes:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...dlpmodels.jpg/

The UV's
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/12/outuv.jpg/

The result on my low poly mesh:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...apapplied.jpg/

The Xnormal setting:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...tingscopy.jpg/



This was an experiment for try all the tips I have read but that was all I get. I used Xnormal for bake the maps and my low poly mesh is made in Maya and the high poly in Zbrush.
I want to know all this because I'm modeling a Mech (with a lot of sharp angles that you can't avoid) and I plan to use a Normal Map and then texture it.

I don´t know what I´m doing wrong and I thing it may be something in the setting of Xnormal but I don't know what. I have watched a video with the same experiment I did but in the video the guy doesn't explain nothing in deep (he repeat all the video he will explain all the process in the next video but the next video he uses the model of a man) and the Normal Map works perfectlly. If you can explain me what to do or post a link with a tutorial that explain what I need I will thank you.
Link of the video:

Learning Xnormal: Part 1 - YouTube

PD: I apologize for any grammar mistakes, I speak spanish :p