(Blender)Baking Normal Maps, but differently

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 1:01 pm

Okay, well I am just really at a lost point with this.

Every tutorial I look at for baking normal maps in Blender only makes you render it from directly in front of the model. Now I understand that this will work if you want to make a texture that is lying on a plane have a normal map, but what about characters?

Here are my thougts:

Could you possibly render the detail mesh from 360 unique degrees in the Z orbital for every Y degree around a 360 degree orbital.

What I am trying to say is take the camera and rotate it around the model from front->top->back->bottom, and then rotate it 1 degree to the left or right for everytime you do that until you get all the way around the model.

Now this would take quite a lot of renders, 360*360 to be exact. But my only problem would be then, how do you composite all of those baked normal maps into one normal map for the character mesh?

My original guess was going to be to increment a .1 mask over every single normal map, increasing your X direction as you go.(In GIMP with a script)

Does this make sense to anyone, has anyone ever thought of doing this with Blender?

xray · Post by **xray** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 1:55 pm

I now exactly what you mean, I also thought about this some weeks ago.
But you have to difference between using normal mapping to get material reflections and using normal maps for bump/parallax mapping.

So lets take your character, if you only want to setup a normal map reflection to your model to affect materials than you only have to create a normal map with one colour like this:

But if you want bump/parallax mapping on your character, that means if you want to affect 3d structures on your model which dont excists in 3d only as 2d, than you have to create first a real 3d structure in blender and create from this 3d structure a normap map with blender and overlay this to the specific location on your model, where the structure should simulate.

Maybe I can create an example if it isnt clear...

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 1:58 pm

dont understand the question

Ive tested to work new tangent normal maps, totally useful for characters animated now. Is a patch yet, but i guess will be included on now on, as is very important and seems to work well.

a windows build
http://www.blenderuniverse.de/download/ ... indows.zip

but please, first, watch carefull this video tut from start to end. Is essential. And then repeat it while doing, is keyframed so you can go dragging the video tut slider easily :

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=111715

oldskoolPunk · Post by **oldskoolPunk** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 7:28 pm

vermeer, this looks exciting. Can you tell us more about it? I am unfortunate enough to be on a very slow connection so no videos for me

Halifax, I could be mistaken, but taking that approach, you might have to adjust the camera "per face".

Im sure you have heard of the alternatives. I can think of 2 right now, DeNormGen and Melody, both will bake you tangent-space normal maps.

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 9:37 pm

Vermeer actually covered my question, I may try Melody instead of Blender though.

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 4:14 pm

ok , I am a quite short of time lately. If youc an wait like 2 days I can expand more on that explaining the vid. Still, that video is key, and is cool to check the normal maps with just a bledner render, tho of course is not like seing in the engine.

You can also try Xnormal, and crazybump. Melody as well, tho requires shaders 2.0. imo, most of these all should work pretty well. (i used in the old past, Orb.)

Zenchuck · Post by **Zenchuck** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 6:23 am

Blender makes tangent normal maps using multi-res and node editor. I know because I've done it before.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthr ... normal+map

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 6:52 am

Zenchuck wrote:Blender makes tangent normal maps using multi-res and node editor. I know because I've done it before.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthr ... normal+map

that's cool, that means it is much easier now generating maps for tangent space operations.

i didn't know about that until now.

thanks.

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 4:35 pm

With this very recent patch, I find dumb easy to make the thing.... I did several tests :

http://graphicall.org/builds/builds/sho ... how&id=567

You cannot download the video that i said, ok , them I'll list very fastly :

-You need the low pol and hi pol mesh. The low pol one needs to have UVs made.

-Position em same place.

-split screen to have an Uv image editing windo opened.

-There, image, new, to have a texture asigned to the low pol one, so to have there baked the normal map (or displacement map, been added also) Better make it hi res. As allways, usual knowledge on uving , texture space, etc, is key.

- add a new "texture" in the material buttons "texture" , "add new".
-in "map input" tab, click UV button, and at "UV:" set the name of the UV coordinates you need, the ones of this low pol mesh. (edit buttons,bellow UV Texture button.usually has already the name of "UVTex" you can reneame it. So copy it from there, and paste at "map input", at "UV:")

-then again in material texture buttons, go to "map to" tab.There, deselect "col", but press "Nor".

-Bellow you have some sliders, "col", "nor" , "var" ....Well, set "nor" as 1.0.

- not inside the material buttons, but the top icon of texture, click it (is like a wall of bricks icon). And as "texture type" , set "image". then if you click on tiny drop down icon of "Load", your before created image will be listed there, if not you could browse for it.

-besides "filter" (one you have loaded the image here) , there's a new button, "normal" , click on it. And select "tangent" in the besides drop down.

-at material settings you may want to set "spec" to zero.

-to do the bake, click on render tab icon (F10) , but you have there an area, "Bake". Left only clicked "Normal". (is useful also to leave "clear" on also) .Also pressed "selected to active". (active, the last one you select) .be sure in the drop down says tangent. Hit Bake button. That's it. You will have that image with normal map baked.

-now you can do a test render. (usual render button) . Or save that image from Image editor as normal map.

I think that's all.