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ZBrush - Normal Maps skewing UVs

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I’ve checked the forums, and I’m at the end of my rope with this issue regarding normal maps.

I’m testing a few things with normal maps in ZBrush. After adding the details I want to my model and bringing the geometry divisions back down to their lowest setting, I go into ZMapper. After projecting a Normal Map, the model doesn’t quite look the way I was expecting. Some of the faces look correct, but upon looking at my Normal Map I just made, tons of UVs appear to be skewing and spiking out. I can’t seem to find out why it’s doing this, any help would be greatly appreciated!

A few things to note:
-Yes, the Maya UV map looks horrendous and there’s tons of space. As stated above I’m doing this as a test to see how normal maps work. I threw an automatic map on the model and made sure none of the UVs have left the 1,1 UV square
-I’ve Opened Maya Configurations prior to projecting the Normal Map

Pictures!
Picture 1
Picture 2

#2

the problems seem to be coming from overlapping UV’s

do a UV check on the object…everything should come out a dark gray. RED = bad!

tool>texture>UVcheck.

if you have overlapping UV’s then Zbrush doesn’t know what goes where, and you end up with the weird texture you’re looking for.

#3

Yeah, Almost every part of the model comes out red chuckles

Is there a way to fix this? Most of the models I’m bringing into ZBrush from Maya have UVs over top of others to conserve texture space. Wouldn’t the normal map be mimicing the Diffuse map texture as well?