Blender, Xnormal...normal maps.

[Ronnie42]

I'm trying to understand Normal maps,I'm well confused.

Firstly as far as I can gather I need a Low, High poly model and possible a 'cage' map which is basically an enlarged low poly model. Anyway I've tried this, not having much luck. I even made sure to create the UVW map for the low poly model with suitable seams, when I import to engines like UE4...I notice that the normal seems to have inverted 'normals maps' or just seems to ignore some of the normal maps all together also my normals are fine on the model itself.

So from what I can understand is I've been told that Perspective views make it easier to see where normals should show up but can't help think there's much to it than that since not having much luck.

I've tried simple things like crates so I could experiment and it would mostly ignore the high poly material, I've made sure that the obj exports are set to selection only to avoid accidentially selecting the wrong objects.

Anyway I normally focus on 3d modelling but thought give normal mapping a go.

[Mr Chappy]

Hi,

I found this tough at first too. I always do my baking in Substance Painter 2 rather than in Blender, I never did get on with doing this using Blender... I have heard Xnormal is good too and something that is maybe worth you having a look at.

The reason why your normal map seems inverted is probably due to it being in the wrong format.
Normal maps can be in Open GL or in Direct X format.
They are exact opposites of each other and can be converted from one to the other.
In Substance Painter I can pick which format I want when exporting. I think you might be able to invert it in Blender with the right node set up, Xnormal would probably have an option for this too.
Blender uses Open GL and will, AFAIK, only generate normal maps in this format when baking.

Another bit of advice for getting clean normal maps, triangulate your low poly mesh and set the entire mesh to smooth shading before baking. This tends to avoid another issue with how different software deals with quads that can also affect(mess up) normal maps!

I never use cages in Substance painter, it uses a face normal average to avoid the need for cages, though they can be used if ever needed. I don't know if Xnormal uses this method or not?

[Pte Jack]

Another option is to bake the normal maps from the actual diffuse textures being used. This can be done using the Norrmals plug in for GIMP. I find that the normals created this way work well and have various selections that you can chose from. They can also be enhanced or reverse easily if required using the plugin.

[Scre]

this is a 5 videos (more coming pretty new) series about baking normal maps etc especialy for BGE but also usefull inside cycles or BI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1mHBt0bjAI

[Ronnie42]

Yes I did hear Cages are more useful if using 3ds Max or Maya but since I'm using Blender it does seem like I might not need cages. For now my focus was to just export the OBJ files to Xnormal to make the normal maps. As for the render in Xnormal...I mainly use Cuda render to render out the maps.

It shouldn't be this difficult to make a normal for a crate. I get some people want to generate maps based on 'real world' designs but this isn't a good approach for things I want to make due to custom designs, etc...

So far having no luck.