Normal map baking gives streaking artifacts

[Rivojen]

So I'm trying to bake out a normal map with turtle, as I have done before. But For what ever reason I get these lines and artifacts in the normal map. I've tried all kinds of different settings and file formats. Using TGA and PNG gives me spots instead of lines.

I thought maybe it was my file, so I opened up a new clean scene and tried to bake a cube over to a cylinder(an example I use to demostrate normal maps to game students) and I still got the same artifact lines.

Things were working fine before the last update. Did that mess up turtle baking?

Or have I just forgot an important step when baking? 

[Rivojen]

Just did a test baking over in xNormal and got much better results without artifacts, so it isn't my model that is the problem.

I would be ok with this workaround if it wasn't for the 65k poly limit on OBJ export. 

So I really need a fix to this issue with turtle 😕

[Rivojen]

Here is a normal map baked out from turtle, I've increased the contrast in photoshop to highlight the problem. These lines are very visible in the specular shine when applied to a mesh.

The first one is how it looks when baked out as a tif and the second is how it looks when it comes out as a tga(or any other format besides tif).

Though it isn't as bad when it isn't a tif, it is still bad. I can't bake out normal maps and then have to fix all the flat surfaces in photoshop afterwards.

[Carlos_Carpintero]

Hello Rivojen,

My name is Carlos and I am a QA here at Autodesk.  I haven't seen any issues like the one you are reporting during my tests.  I have a couple of questions.  Are you on Windows or Mac?  What is your video card? Which version of LT are you using?

Can you send me a scene file that produces the issue on your machine?  You can send it directly to me at carlos.carpintero@autodesk.com

Thanks, and as soon as I have any news I'll let you know.

Carlos

[Rivojen]

Thanks for teh reply. I've sent you a mail with the files(twice because I got an error the first time even though thunderbird put it in the sent folder).

Hope you can get anything useful out of it.

Thank you for taking your time with this 🙂

[Carlos_Carpintero]

Hi Rivojen,

I've sent you a detailed response by email, but in summary I think the issue has to do with Dithering.

Regards,

Carlos.

[Rivojen]

Well, it was the dithering. But after seen the result without dithering I can see why the engineers put that in as default. The result without dithering is even worse I think. I'll attach a screenshot.

[Rivojen]

I tried out my idea about blending it out with other specularity with somewhat success.

I sent a specular map in through the alpha to the spec color(the way unity does it) and it covers it up a lot. Though if you are planing on using a tight spec then it pops back again. But it seem to dissapear completly when color is also applied.

So I guess the end result is fine, but I do find this strange as I have bake perfectly fine normal maps out of maya before. Though that was big Maya and with transfer maps.