Maya 2017 Normal mapping gone horribly wrong

[Amatsukaze_DD]

So TL;DR I'm doing the FFR41-MR "Mave" for my modeling ii final. Ambitious, but I like it that way. After about 30-40 hours I'm finally happy with the model itself, then comes normal map
baking etc before throwing it into quixel for texturing. And this is where the problems begin. The problem is twofold.

First, as shown in the images below, while the bake came out probably 85% ok, there are a few areas where it could use some work.

http/imgur.com/a/QBaYO

from top to bottom, there are lines like this all over the model. Now, I think those are fixed by seperating the UV's and hardening those edges, correct? In the 2nd picture, more of these lines can be seen, and if you look closely the entire surface has this "fuzzy" texture, which I'm not sure how to fix. 3rd, the "fuzzy" texture can be seen a little better, and while I'm no stranger to wavy-ness in normals, there are a few places where faces viewed at certain angles look, well, not great but passable, then on the fourth picture you can see the same face from a different angle, where it's defaulted to black.

All of the above sound like pretty minor fixes, and I went to change some things in my UV map. Seperating some faces, running a harden edge script again, and I went to re-bake. This is where it all goes HORRIBLY.

http/imgur.com/a/rYThH

I didn't change any global settings or anything (at least initially), and the very next bake came out looking like the first picture in the album. What the hell happened and how do I fix this. I'm at a complete loss. The next 2 pictures in the album are the UV map itself and the "good" bake that only needed a few changes to be pretty good.

My smoothed mesh and LP mesh are pretty much exactly on top of each other, and the mesh has been mirror duplicated over. I can give screenshots and even the file if someone wishes. This project is due tuesday, and I'm pretty desperate for help.

TL;DR

Bad problems with normal maps, see imgur links.

 

[jaslion]

So TL;DR I'm doing the FFR41-MR "Mave" for my modeling ii final. Ambitious, but I like it that way. After about 30-40 hours I'm finally happy with the model itself, then comes normal map
baking etc before throwing it into quixel for texturing. And this is where the problems begin. The problem is twofold.

First, as shown in the images below, while the bake came out probably 85% ok, there are a few areas where it could use some work.

http/imgur.com/a/QBaYO

from top to bottom, there are lines like this all over the model. Now, I think those are fixed by seperating the UV's and hardening those edges, correct? In the 2nd picture, more of these lines can be seen, and if you look closely the entire surface has this "fuzzy" texture, which I'm not sure how to fix. 3rd, the "fuzzy" texture can be seen a little better, and while I'm no stranger to wavy-ness in normals, there are a few places where faces viewed at certain angles look, well, not great but passable, then on the fourth picture you can see the same face from a different angle, where it's defaulted to black.

All of the above sound like pretty minor fixes, and I went to change some things in my UV map. Seperating some faces, running a harden edge script again, and I went to re-bake. This is where it all goes HORRIBLY.

http/imgur.com/a/rYThH

I didn't change any global settings or anything (at least initially), and the very next bake came out looking like the first picture in the album. What the hell happened and how do I fix this. I'm at a complete loss. The next 2 pictures in the album are the UV map itself and the "good" bake that only needed a few changes to be pretty good.

My smoothed mesh and LP mesh are pretty much exactly on top of each other, and the mesh has been mirror duplicated over. I can give screenshots and even the file if someone wishes. This project is due tuesday, and I'm pretty desperate for help.

TL;DR

Bad problems with normal maps, see imgur links.

All I see in your normal map is this:
There is something clipping in your object did you make an accidental clone that is inside it?
I also see flipped polys in the normal map.

 

[Amatsukaze_DD]

Yes to the clipping one, and yes to the flipped one. Mostly solved, the horrendous map was because I mirrored over and then tried to re-bake. The lines are indeed fixed by seperating edges/hardening, the fuzziness is fixed by increasing the search envelope, and the off-angle-blackness is fixed by adding more faces.