Black Normal Map

[jamie_emerson]

Hello,

I am taking an environment design class and I am trying to bake a normal map from a high poly swimming pool onto a low poly one. I have baked normal maps before in Substance Painter with no problems before. I have asked my professor if he knows what's going on and he wasn't able to help me.

My low poly is exactly on top of my high poly in 3DS Max. I have tried setting all of of the coordinates to zero, and resetting xForm. After I export from 3DS Max I re-imported everything to make sure it was all still fine. This is what it looks like after all that in 3DS Max:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B22CAMu_jGxuMEx6dzdKcENieWM/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B22CAMu_jGxuLTdjc2VxMHp5R00/view?usp=sharing

Here's the unwrap for the low-poly. I had some pieces laying over each other and they have been moved over:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B22CAMu_jGxuUmk5eUJuS0FFMFk/view?usp=sharing

After importing to Substance Painter, I have it set to OpenGL and 2048x2048 map size. Everything looks fine with the low-poly:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B22CAMu_jGxuV3hKWTAzVFVwOEk/view?usp=sharing

When I start baking, I check only the normal map to start with. I set that to 2048x2048 with 2x2 anti-aliasing (for testing purposes). I have also tried 8x8 anti-aliasing and nothing is different. I have tried changing the max frontal and rear distances to 0.0015 and 0.002 and that doesn't seem to make a difference.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B22CAMu_jGxuNmRNODVhc2drTkE/view?usp=sharing

 The normal map tries to bake and it only takes a couple of seconds for it to give me a black map:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B22CAMu_jGxuVW5CeDMyR2FIUmM/view?usp=sharing

I have tried re-exporting and importing several times. I have been working on this for about 3 hours on my own and with help from my professor. I have tried restarting the programs and restarting my computer. I have no idea what's going on. I also have several other environment pieces that go with the pool (it's going to be a modular Greek bath house) and none of the other pieces want to bake either. I have tried re-baking a character from another with no problems.

I will attach my 3DS Max file if anyone wants to mess with it.


Thank you.

[zoramaster]

Bump, having the same issue.

[Wertyn]

Same problem 

[Nicolas Wirrmann]

The normals of the high poly model are flipped. Go to the edit poly, select all faces and flip the normals.
To avoid that in the future make sure you disable the "backface cull" in the object properties (right click / properties).