Normal Map Seam Issue

[Nhoefer146]

I've been battling seams like this one on multiple static meshes now, and I decided to come to the community to help me out. I put together a picture showing what I am having problems with.



1. Here is the seam on the mesh that I'm working on.

2. Here is the UVW map that I laid out, but if you notice, I split the spirals in half to optimize texture space.

3. This is the rendered normal map without any editing. One thing I point out is that I don't even have anything in that texture space but the seams are still there!

I am just wondering why this is happening and if I can fix this with the spiral's uvs remaining split.

Thanks!

[Leyto]

Could it be some non-welded vertices that overlap ?

[Benjammin]

You need different smoothing groups for each UV island to get your normals baking correctly. That said, its a pretty bad place for a seam and its going to be noticeable whatever you do - even if the normal map displays correctly its going to be a pain to get your diffuse looking seamless. I recommend changing your UV layout.

[Nhoefer146]

I agree that it was a bad place to put the seam, but at the time I couldn't figure out how I could use the entire uv space effectively without it. Fortunately, I found a simple solution without having the seam: 1024x512 texture rather than a typical 1024x1024.