Distance-Based Texture Seams

Question

I've run across a strange issue where my normal maps make pronounced seams when I zoom out from my model. I have the gloss map in the alpha of the normal map. I have the "_ddna" suffix on the file. I am using X+ Y- Z+ normal directions. I've even tried making it a CryTiff file and I still get the same result. The attached images are the same except for how far away the camera was from the model. What could be causing this?

REMOVEDUPLOAD

Accepted Answer

Your map features all issues I reported.

You may surely get a way better texture space coverage and overally less seams.

your background pink or white is both wrong. you need normal neutral one (127 127 255).

you need expanded borders at least 4 pixels( border extruded around the uv island) and fade them to neutral.

bring the lips back in the mouth

Slight distortion at hi resolution is way better than seams especially your map where details are quite smooth.

move seams out of the face to under the jaw.

Put hears and more of the cranium with the face(seam only on the back of the hear) and you may also shrink the cranium a bit if you don't really need to show it lowering the textel density.

Also move eyes elsewhereand possibly collapse eye sockets.

Generally eyes have their own map.

Answer

Can you show your normalmap?

key elements to not incur in this issue :

- Strategic seam placement in less visible areas.
- Proper "safe borders" uv islands not too tightly packed.
- Smooth empty space fading from uv border to neutral color and not to black or any other color(127,127,255).
The most advanced mip map generation cannot account for the lack of the previous steps.

Answer

REMOVEDUPLOAD

I had to shrink it a tad and save it as a PNG to upload it, but it is normally a TIF. But like I said, it looks fine up close--there's no seam. It's when I zoom out that one develops, which makes me think its a LOD setting somewhere.

Answer

REMOVEDUPLOADhead-normal-v03-01.png

Alright. I first tried just filling the background with normal blue and softening the edges and that worked, but I then decided it was better to just UV her again. This time I placed all seams under where her hair would be. Although I still don't know why the seams only appeared when looking at her further away, they are gone and that's what matters.

However, while looking around the internet I stumbled upon this other image:

![](http://cdn4.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Ryse55.jpg)

This is from Ryse and it has several throughout the face. @REDACTEDUSER

Answer

REMOVEDUPLOAD

When adding the gloss map to the alpha it caused the background (of the previous image) to turn pink. I made a new normal map with a non-pink background to see if that was the issue and it still displayed the seam in LY.

Answer

They only show when at distance because you are looking at different mips at lower resolution so any border pixel get averaged with some background color.

The texture from rise is surely wrinkle map , but i don't know the details , maybe documentation explains how to leverage that feature.

Distance-Based Texture Seams

Relevant content