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Question by SympK · May 26, 2012 at 10:33 PM · normalmaps

correct process to bake a good normal map

Hello friends. I would ask to you some hints about baking a decent normal mapping (I use maya to bake and Lightwave to model, but from what I ask I guess that it would be a procedure valid in any package able to bake 'em). I proceeded this way:

  1. made the low poly mesh (2500 quads), uvmapped (512^2), some parts cutoff and mirrored, some unwrapped as entire

  2. imported it in sculptris (I know, zbrush's better, but costs alot; I use maya from school, and a old pack of Lightwave...) and added details (4 millions tris!)

  3. reimported into maya along with the lowpoly source; setup the whole for baking (from the lightning section), setting the cage at 2.0%

  4. saved the map as 1024^2 png

When I imported the lowpoly (fbx) into unity, I saw it with "splotches", "pinchings" and other strange artifacts. It is due to a cage issue, or what? Perhaps I should have started whit modeling the hipoly version AND make a retopo upon it, instead of layering the altered hipoly upon its original lowpoly source?

That's why I ask you what would be an optimal procedure and settings which you usually follow in order to model a decent model suitable bake a correct normalmap.


In the case my question were too vague, please advice me instead of countervoting me: I'm new, and I'm still learning the conventions of interacting here. Thank you in advance.

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Answer by SarperS · May 27, 2012 at 11:55 AM

As far as I know, the standard procedure in the industry is as follows;

  1. Modelling the base mesh

  2. Sculpting it

  3. Retopo on the sculpted model

  4. Bake normal maps

I don't have any knowledge to give tips based on your pipeline but searching for some video tutorials might help. Also you can take a look at Blender if you haven't already. It has decent sculpting tools and normal map baking.

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avatar image SympK · May 27, 2012 at 04:52 PM 0
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Hi. From the step 3 I get that the model to be baked must be the one retopologized from the hires. That's ok. I tried to use Blender, and albeit I see that's a nice and almost complete program (specially, free...), from which many people are able to draw interesting things, it is also distant from the methods which I'm used to, belonging to other modelers.

I also understand that probably an answer to my question about the deformation of the normalmapped mesh were somewhat depending from a direct look at both models (hi & lo), although I'd hoped in some hints from whom eventually had stumbled upon a similar issue.

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