How would you make normal maps?

lou_harper

I'm good with Photoshop, but DAZ content creation is not my thing. My goal create a custom texture using a photo. Something fairly simple. I can take an existing asset and edit the image for the base color, no problem. What I don't know is how to create the matching normal map.

lilweep

I guess two ways:

1) If you are making Normal maps that are corresponding to details from a high-resolution sculpt, e.g., if you sculpted a really high detail character and then you want to put that high-res sculpted detail on the low-res Genesis 9 base mesh, you can "bake" out a normal texture map from the high res mesh to the low res mesh, using software like Blender, or xNormal, Substance Painter, topogun, zbrush, or many others.

2) You can fake normal map details (i.e., derive them artificially) from a 2d image by using photomanipulation, e.g., one of the below options:

• Artificial Intelligence
• Materialize software (or Filter Forge)
• Manually paint them (in something like Substance Painter or Photoshop)

barbult

Last Christmas Totte (Code 66) gave a freebie product that creates normal maps from bump or diffuse, right inside Daz Studio.

I also use an NVIDIA photoshop plugin to create normal maps in Photoshop CS6.

 

lou_harper

lilweep said:

I guess two ways:

1) If you are making Normal maps that are corresponding to details from a high-resolution sculpt, e.g., if you sculpted a really high detail character and then you want to put that high-res sculpted detail on the low-res Genesis 9 base mesh, you can "bake" out a normal texture map from the high res mesh to the low res mesh, using software like Blender, or xNormal, Substance Painter, topogun, zbrush, or many others.

2) You can fake normal map details (i.e., derive them artificially) from a 2d image by using photomanipulation, e.g., one of the below options:

• Artificial Intelligence
• Materialize software (or Filter Forge)
• Manually paint them (in something like Substance Painter or Photoshop)

Nothing so complicated. I just want to make a Halloween pie.

 

lou_harper

barbult said:

Last Christmas Totte (Code 66) gave a freebie product that creates normal maps from bump or diffuse, right inside Daz Studio.

I also use an NVIDIA photoshop plugin to create normal maps in Photoshop CS6.

 

I need to look up that plugin.

lilweep

lou_harper said:

lilweep said:

I guess two ways:

1) If you are making Normal maps that are corresponding to details from a high-resolution sculpt, e.g., if you sculpted a really high detail character and then you want to put that high-res sculpted detail on the low-res Genesis 9 base mesh, you can "bake" out a normal texture map from the high res mesh to the low res mesh, using software like Blender, or xNormal, Substance Painter, topogun, zbrush, or many others.

2) You can fake normal map details (i.e., derive them artificially) from a 2d image by using photomanipulation, e.g., one of the below options:

• Artificial Intelligence
• Materialize software (or Filter Forge)
• Manually paint them (in something like Substance Painter or Photoshop)

Nothing so complicated. I just want to make a Halloween pie.

 

How is materialize complicated?

Edit: link https://boundingboxsoftware.com/materialize/

lou_harper

lilweep said:

How is materialize complicated?

Edit: link https://boundingboxsoftware.com/materialize/

What I meant is G9 and such. Thanks for the link.

chris-2599934

If you have (or can make) a greyscale bump or displacement map image, you can create a normal map from it here: https://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/