Hey guys, I got layed off 2 weeks ago from my first character job, it didn't deal with any kind of normal mapping, so this is what I am working on to go into a new 'folio.

As you can see I am having alot of trouble on getting the in-organic/hard edged stuff to look right. It looks concave and has alot of blackened artifacts when applied as a normal map. Can someone please help me out with some tips or a link to a tutorial so I can finish this guy?!
Work in progress...

Here's a quick normal map applied to the hard edged part of the suit.. it looks like CRAP, please help me out if you can.


Thanks!

I'd recommend reading some threads in 2d/3d, common normalmap problems have been pointed and discussed to death here.
It's always awesome tho when someone screams for help but gives no information about his workflow nor posts the normalmaps etc that are giving him the problems.

There's different reasons why you could be having those results depending on whether you had a hipoly mesh done or not (looks like you didn't tho).

First of all, never change the smoothing of a model after baking normalmaps of it, that will break smoothing and give you weird looking shading (like dark parts where there shuldn't be or triangles showing through) like you have. Since it doesn't look like you had a hipoly model tho, your problem lies elsewhere...

If you didn't have a hipoly mesh, then you'll always have hard edges like in that horizontal cylinder as there's no normal information saying that edge shouldn't be sharp.
If you want it rounded, either model a rounded hipoly version to bake from, round the edge in the lowpoly, or raise the smoothing of the model until it looks rounded.

Concave stuff... hard to tell without seeing the bloody offending normalmap, could be the OGL viewport of you app not supporting your maybe mirrored pieces, could be that stuff is painted into the normalmap and is crap, could be you changed the smoothing...

anyway, most of the problems seem smoothing related but without seeing the normalmap and maybe UV layout one can only guess it might be one thing or another, unless it's an app specific problem.

No ones screaming here my man, I'm just trying to figure this out. Remember when you were trying to learn something new and didn't know everything? That's where I'm at.

[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I didn't know the smoothing would affect the outcome in such a way, I softened all the edges and it improved greatly, thanks.

I created my hi-poly mesh in Mudbox from an imported lowpoly.

I'll post my normal map in a sec, and I'll try to find what I'm looking for in the forum...

Here's the bloody offending normal map:

Here it is after fixing the smoothing.. much improved... but still getting a concaved look above the shoulder... Ill try to hammer it out.

Don't know if this is helpful but, for hardedge stuff I usually subdivide the mesh in maya/whatever so that when I smooth it in zbrush/mudbox it retains its shape and edges better. Also, in zbrush there is a button that will subdivide your mesh with out smoothing it. This leaves faceting but you can go in and smooth it out yourself taking care not to mess up your edges. Lastly, don't be afraid to take the normal map into photoshop and adjust it using your stamp, smudge and other tools.

Looks a lot better.
Dunno about the concave stuff, seems to be in the normalmap already as if it was baked like that from the hipoly model.

In the worst case, you can just go in and paint that area in plain blue by hand.

The rest of the artifacts (those visible shaded triangles) are hmm... the result of either messy shaded polygons in the lowpoly (assuming the hipoly is nicely smooth etc) or still a smoothing problem in the lowpoly.

When baking a normalmap, it bakes the smoothing of the lowpoly model too (that's why you can't change it afterwards and why you get all the funky colors in the normalmap even on flat surfaces). Normally the baked normalmap will compensate to some extent for bad smoothing in the lowpoly model but it takes some tries at first until you find out what you can get away with.

It also bakes the smoothing of the hipoly model. Decent hipoly models usually look better with low smoothing angles (25-35 or so). If the hipoly model has akward smoothing in your 3d app, it will bake that into the normalmap. The lower you can have the smoothing without breaking the smoothness of the hipoly model, the cleaner and better the normalmap will be.

I'd make sure the lowpoly model has a rather uniform smoothing working well across the whole model. The msoothing on the lowpoly can be as high as necessary and the normalmap will compensate, can go up to 180 degress to make sure it's all smoothed.

Thanks very much for the tips guys... I feel like Im getting the grasp of it now. Hand painting the normal map opens up so many posibilities!

Lots more clean up and tweaking to do on the normal map, also color and logos of course, but Im getting there...
Thanks again, and feel free to crit.

Any ideas on how to improve? I'm thinking the visor is a little dull.

is it good? is it crap? I think its pretty good but could use some improvements... just not sure what those are.

I think your texture needs some more work. It being so large, I would expect to see much more than just plain colors, perhaps a pattern of the fabric that is present in normal and specular maps. It's hard to tell what materials the suit is made of. Right now it looks like the whole model is just a plastic figure. The visor would look much better with a nice reflection map. Not sure how much your design has in common with attempts to come up with a suit suitable for Mars walk, but to me right now it looks more like a motorcycle suit. Maybe look at Mars spacesuit prototypes, like the ones that were on trial in North Dakota. I reckon that something like the yellow suit with black stripes would be visually much more engaging and it would be more fun to work on.

I just had the opportunity to see the shuttle Discovery take off some three weeks ago, now that I live not that far from Cape Canaveral and I'm all into reading NASA news, so I look forward to see where you will take this model and I hope you can make it really stand out.

thanks very very much.. that's exactly the kind of advice I was needing to take this further.

Thanks again, I will re-work this to get some more visual interest and depth of function.

Thanks again!

haha, I said thanks like 5 times, :|