Get rid of the neck seam ?

[Kentix]

Hello modders and good game lovers.

I am actually playing modding TW3 (reworking textures to make them look finer, less blurry, etc. and reworking some low-poly things) it's been a week I am doing A LOT of tests and I finally got a good and fast workflow to rework meshes (static and non-static) in Blender. I even wanted to make a thread with a todo list to rework easily the meshes for new modders so they don't waste a entirely week like me and they can instantly go to work and see the result in-game.

The thing is now it's been 3 days I am working on heads and where I got everything fine (get rid of the ears bug, custom normals problems, weights, etc.) I'm struggling with one last thing, the neck seam. I tried so much things but nothing worked perfectly.

The only time it was almost perfect was when I used a Data transfer modifier on my reworked head linked on the non-reworked head imported with its custom normals and mixed at 0.6 the Face Corner topology but in game there was still the seam. At least I got the best results with this method, but again it wasn't "perfect" like vanilla.

So all that to say, I wanted to know if someone finally found a solution to get rid of the neck seam when we rework the head mesh ? Thanks for reading this

 

[Guest 3841499]

Isn't there a dedicated mesh for it?

 

[Kentix]

Yes and this is the problem :/

 

[Guest 3841499]

I think you should connect with the author of of this mod - https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/3163 . I bet he knows what you want to know.

 

[Kentix]

Mmh I will try to contact him thanks a lot for your answer

 

[tinsum]

hi,Kentix,did you find the solution. I have the same problem,if you find the solution,can you teach me??

 

[Kentix]

Yes simply use Blender 2.76 Apparently Blender 2.77 also works but didn't try it myself.

 

[K_000]

@tinsum, you don't seem to have received a proper answer here, so let me see if I can make it easier for you:

Seams are visible between two corresponding meshes when the vertex normals along the meeting vertices of the meshes are not facing the same direction. Put another way, if the vertices of both meshes along the seam have vertex normals facing the same direction, then the light that is calculated for those normals is identical, therefore no seam is visible.

You can use ANY 3D software to fix this issue. I use both Maya and Blender to remove seams when modding Witcher 3 meshes. You can use whatever program you like, since the process will be very similar to how I do it. All you really want is the vertex normals along the seam to match:

1) Once you have done all of your weight and vertex color transfers between the vanilla head/body meshes and your custom meshes in Blender, you should be left with just your custom mesh and the armature, right? So let's call this MESH 1 (let's assume we're just doing the head at this point)

2) Now open Maya separately and import your custom head mesh AND your custom body mesh into a new scene. Just the meshes, NOT the weighted .fbx files with all the bones you set up in Blender - only your custom meshes.

3) Display the vertex normals: Select both meshes --> Display --> Polygons --> vertex normals

4) See how the vertex normals along the seam are pointing in different directions?

5) With both meshes selected, enter vertex component mode (F9) and select all of the intersecting vertices along the seam (from both meshes).

6) In the modelling menu, select Mesh Display --> Average

7) Notice how all of the vertices along the seam on both meshes are now pointing in the exact same direction? That means they'll "reflect" the lighting in the exact same way now.

8) Now all you do is export these new meshes. Let's call the exported head MESH 2.

9) Import MESH 2 into your Blender scene that contains MESH 1.

10) Now you just transfer your weighting, armature, vertex colors, and material from MESH 1 to MESH 2. Then you can delete MESH 1 and export MESH 2 along with the armature.

No more seam.

EDIT: Obviously your ambient and normal maps of both meshes need to match at the seam, and both meshes also need the correct vertex colors too (this is more important for the head than the body, however. I don't bother much with the body vertex colors).

Pro tip: MARI will make your life so much easier when it comes normal and ambient maps, especially matching them at the seam.

 

[tinsum]

@tinsum, you don't seem to have received a proper answer here, so let me see if I can make it easier for you:

Seams are visible between two corresponding meshes when the vertex normals along the meeting vertices of the meshes are not facing the same direction. Put another way, if the vertices of both meshes along the seam have vertex normals facing the same direction, then the light that is calculated for those normals is identical, therefore no seam is visible.

You can use ANY 3D software to fix this issue. I use both Maya and Blender to remove seams when modding Witcher 3 meshes. You can use whatever program you like, since the process will be very similar to how I do it. All you really want is the vertex normals along the seam to match:

1) Once you have done all of your weight and vertex color transfers between the vanilla head/body meshes and your custom meshes in Blender, you should be left with just your custom mesh and the armature, right? So let's call this MESH 1 (let's assume we're just doing the head at this point)

2) Now open Maya separately and import your custom head mesh AND your custom body mesh into a new scene. Just the meshes, NOT the weighted .fbx files with all the bones you set up in Blender - only your custom meshes.

3) Display the vertex normals: Select both meshes --> Display --> Polygons --> vertex normals

4) See how the vertex normals along the seam are pointing in different directions?

5) With both meshes selected, enter vertex component mode (F9) and select all of the intersecting vertices along the seam (from both meshes).

6) In the modelling menu, select Mesh Display --> Average

7) Notice how all of the vertices along the seam on both meshes are now pointing in the exact same direction? That means they'll "reflect" the lighting in the exact same way now.

8) Now all you do is export these new meshes. Let's call the exported head MESH 2.

9) Import MESH 2 into your Blender scene that contains MESH 1.

10) Now you just transfer your weighting, armature, vertex colors, and material from MESH 1 to MESH 2. Then you can delete MESH 1 and export MESH 2 along with the armature.

No more seam.

EDIT: Obviously your ambient and normal maps of both meshes need to match at the seam, and both meshes also need the correct vertex colors too (this is more important for the head than the body, however. I don't bother much with the body vertex colors).

Pro tip: MARI will make your life so much easier when it comes normal and ambient maps, especially matching them at the seam.

thank you ,K_000

it did work,though still had some seams,could ignore it from far camera,i guessed some normal map did't adjust well.