Normal maps in Cycles Render?

Graphics Shaders & Materials
1

First I’d like to thank those who helped me in my previous thread. It really made me understand how blender works a little better.

I’ve ran into a little more of a complex issue however, and saw it necessary to make a new thread entirely.

Here’s the current model I have right now, it’s just a simple knife I made in 10 or so minutes,

I’m kinda newish to Cycles render mode, but so far I like the workflow a lot more. Obviously, the handles grip shouldnt be flat.

I have duplicated the knife and hid the blade to sculpt the grip. I just added a bunch of subdivisions and used blob (Best to use for grip I guess?). Anyways after all that, I am lost. I have 2 models, 1 low poly knife and 1 high poly knife. I know to have them both centered and what not, but I’m pretty much confused beyond that. What next?
Most of the tuts and documentation I’ve read arent using cycles render.

Thanks for the help, hope to be making something other than low-poly here soon :slight_smile:

2

  • UV unwrap the low poly model

  • In “UV/Image Editor” make a “new image”

  • Select the low poly mesh and In “Properties” in the Material tab select a Material

  • (select “Use Nodes” if the material was created in “Blender Render” mode)

  • In “Node Editor” add a Texture - Image texture node

  • Edit the node to point at the new image you made in step 2

  • In “Properties” in the Render tab go to Bake

  • Bake type = Normal

  • Space = Tangent

  • Selected to Active = checked

  • Ray Distance = 0.1 (adjust this if the bake looks odd)

  • Select the High poly and Shift Select the Low poly and hit Bake

3

To generate the normal maps, I usually do it with xNormal (I’ve also heard good things about handplane baker).

I didn’t know it could be done in Blender, too. Must try what @Pengocat said :slight_smile:

The cycles node setup to render, once you have the normal map, should look like this:

3047563--228567--cycles-normal-map.png
3047563--228567--cycles-normal-map.png980×551 63 KB

4

Thanks for the reply! This has helped me tremendously

5

I also prefer xNormal to be honest. The baking process in Blender can be quite convoluted compared to xNormal.

6

to be honest, baking maps in toolbag3 is really awesome
its so quick and easy… no more hassle with alle the crap

its not free… but its really worth the money

7

My pick for non-free texture tools is Substance Painter. It bakes and plugs in the textures for further modification with 1 click.

8

I appreciate the programs you guys mentioned, ill deffo give em a look. For me right now tho its a learning thing. Id rather not take any shortcuts so thats why I wanna kinda do everything from scratch. *of course, aside from making my own 3D modeling software and 3D engine obviously LOL. Just trynna do it barebones style for the sake of learning

1 Like
9

honestly, that the best aproach you can make since you need to understand first what you are doing
but later in production, shortcuts are the way to go