Is it possible to bake normal maps into diffuse maps?
Im entering a mini contest tomorrow, They have asked for something I find odd.
They want to see a high to low poly process yet they are only allowing a diffuse map to be used?
Is there a workflow I can keep as much detail as possible and bake it into a diffuse map?
They want to see a high to low poly process yet they are only allowing a diffuse map to be used?
Is there a workflow I can keep as much detail as possible and bake it into a diffuse map?
Replies
That is a bit odd though, that a high poly would be required for a contest without normal maps.
Try this thread: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=101000
But still possible, grab your normal map, go to channels, select and copy the green channel. Now paste this onto a layer on top of your diffuse map, set it to Overlay and bring the opacity to around 20%, or tweak it to whatever looks best.
if you are going to use green channel of normal map, i suggest baking an object/world space normal map for that since it is pure highpoly information rather than tangent space information which can have weird triangulation shading due to vertex normal.
but to address your main question, you can add highpoly information like ambient occlusion, curvature map and cavity map. to go even further you can try to bake some sort of GI bounce map in your choice of application and finally you can bake in some image based light information into the model or combine the IBL lighting with GI to get a more integrated result.
Like MM says, if you want to pull content out of a NM, it should be object space, as object space has absolute, not relative values.
I didn't make the character below, but he used this map as an overlay in the way I mentioned:
As you can see, it retains a lot of depth, even in a flat lighting environment.
Super useful map.
Here's some detail on the layer setup.
Not sure exactly why I used both a WSN and pRTP with different blending modes. The way I usually do it now is roughly this:
Cavity/Curvature - Overlay
Green Channel of WSN - Soft Light or Overlay at 50% opacity
Ambient Occlusion - Multiply at 50%
Base Diffuse Color - Standard Blend
And then I have a layer at the top of the stack that I paint on to tighten up areas or get very specific shading.
I love you guys
Here is an example of a 10k tris model I am working on now, where I used 2 overlays of AO and Cavity. You can see that the normal map doesn't really add much. Just a little better detail for the face.
Sorry if this shot is a little intense, I haven't gotten around to making her outfit yet.
What is WSN? World Space Normal map?
1. In @Joopson's post, the character has some highlights on pants and wounds. Is it hand painted?
2. In @Fingus's post, the green channel of the Bent Normal/PRTp looks very shinny, which is very cool. How it is made?