Generating Normal Maps... From Normal Maps?
polycounter lvl 14
This is a bit of a dumb question, but the internet has no definite answer that I can find (which is, now that I think about it, probably a pretty clear answer).
Is there no way to bake down a normal map from something with a normal map?
For example, sculpt out a brick, bake it down onto a cube, use that baked-down-brick-cube to form a cool looking brick wall, then bake that whole wall out, full wall shape and individual brick forms and all.
It would sure make dealing with loads of heavy assets a lot easier.
If only there was some way to load a normal map into XNormal which gets applied to your high-poly mesh and taken into account during the bake-down...
I'm I crazy?
Is there no way to bake down a normal map from something with a normal map?
For example, sculpt out a brick, bake it down onto a cube, use that baked-down-brick-cube to form a cool looking brick wall, then bake that whole wall out, full wall shape and individual brick forms and all.
It would sure make dealing with loads of heavy assets a lot easier.
If only there was some way to load a normal map into XNormal which gets applied to your high-poly mesh and taken into account during the bake-down...
I'm I crazy?
Replies
Load a mesh into the High Definition Meshes slot, then right click and select Base Texture to Bake. Select your normal map and then check the box that says "Base texture is a tangent-space normal map."
After that, you should be able to bake additional normal maps from your already-normal-mapped mesh.
There are ways to do this in other programs as well, so I'm sure other people will be chiming in about this.
I've plugged in my normal map but I don't have a check-box for defining it as a tangent-space normal map. I'm installing the latest version of XNormal now, I was using a version from about 3 years ago, maybe I'm missing some tools.
Yup. I've done that a bunch with freelance work. Such a time saver.