Normal Map seam help (not mirrored)

[Arkadius]

I posted in a normal map thread hoping for a response but I think the thread may have gotten lost in the other threads so hopefully someone will clear this up for me up for me.

I'm have normal map seams where ever my uv is broken up, I've tried painting in the seam, inverting my red and green channels but that didn't help very much. I found this link within one of the other forums but I don't understand it, could someone please explain it in dummy terms? :(

Im useing 3ds max, Xnormal to bake, and fx Shader 3.0 to test the seams.

http://ddnetworkofartists.net/index.php?catid=7&blogid=1

[blankslatejoe]

tiling textures often create lighting seams along the UV edges--have you tried going into the red and green channels and painting a 50% gray along the seams. Doing this on the channel level ensures you're getting the right values.

The downside of doing this is that you will lose the lighting information along the seam, but you can finesse this approach quite a bit.

[Arkadius]

Yeah I've been doing that for about a year I would paint a neutral blue along the seam (R125, G125, B255) But I thought maybe there was another way of getting the maps. Thanks for the reply Joe.

[blankslatejoe]

no problem. Tiling normal maps are the bane of my existence.

If I remember right, one of those bump-to-normal map generation programs has a 'tiling' flag you can set, which also helps with the seams. But I can't remember if it's xnormal, the nvidia plugin, or crazybump.

[Arkadius]

Seams in general drive me nuts.

Oh yeah, I found it, tiling option is in Xnormal in the height to normal map tool set.

Nice.