Hi all,
I was wondering whether its possible to use a tiling material and have based normals/ao?
I was, until recently, exporting the uv image from Maya to then use as a template to create the textures for some simple models, combined with high poly/low poly models and using xNormal I was able to export normal/ao maps that all just worked with the model.
Recently I started working on a project where I am using tiling materials and I haven’t found a way to combine the normal/ao maps from xNormal with the tiling materials to get a solution that works.
What I have tried this morning, which feels close is this;
Maya
- create high and low poly models (in this case the high poly is just the same model that has some bevelling)
- create two uvsets, the first for lighting (index 0) the second for the *albedo *(index 1)
- auto-unwrap both high and low poly models for the lighting uvset (index 0)
- manually unwrap the low poly model for the albedo uvset (index 1)
- create a lambert material, set with a tiling material, applied to the albedo uvset (index 1)
- exported both high and low poly models as .fbx
xNormal
- set both high and low poly models
- select normal and ao map types
- generate maps
Outcome:
Unreal
- import the mesh
- import the normal and ao maps
- update the material and plug in the normal and ao maps, using a “texcoord” node to specify index 0
- save the material
- build the lighting
Outcome:
So, I feel I’m close, I can see where the normal/ao maps would be taking affect, but clearly this doesn’t look good.
I believe the dark/black areas are caused by the gaps in the uvshells for the highpoly lighting set;
…but I’ve never had to manually deal with the uvs for a high poly version previously, I only tidy/fix/gridify (not sure of the best term) the low poly version which I used in the level/scene - which, even though I wouldn’t normally do this for the lighting uvset, I have done on the lowpoly version this time to see if it made a difference, but it didn’t.
“Fixing” the highpoly uvset for lighting would be, well, a pig of a task, with all of the little oddities for bevelling and so on, so I’m not entirely sure that this is the “fix” that I need. I suspect more likely, my approach to this generally/entirely is wrong. Or perhaps I just cannot have a tiling material *and *use normal/ao maps.
Please be aware, my understanding of all of this is fairly low, I’m quite new to these concepts generally, so if I have made any mistakes in what I’ve tried to explain, please accept my apologies, and, if you have time to reply, if you could simplify those responses as much as possible I’d be grateful - just finding my feet etc 
Note: This isn’t a model I want/need, its just something simple I put together to try to work out the process of getting tiling materials and normal/ao maps applied to the same model.
Thanks in advance for your time and any help you can offer.
Kind regards,
Rob