Low and highpoly thoughts

[Frozan]

Hey everyone ive been experimenting with making normal maps for lowpoly woks using high poly source from the previous lowpoly. any who was wondering is there anything that is a common thing to keep in mind when modeling higher for the normal? anything i should keep in mind? just curious.

[ThatDon]

For the high poly go crazy! and don't work about shitty topology or anything, just as long as you get exactly what you want visually.

[Frozan]

isnt there some type of constrants though? im asking like is there things u should do so that when u create your normals the nighting info from the high transfers to the low well. not with the normalizing options but the actual way the low poly is?

[ThatDon]

The most important thing to worry about when making the low for the normal map is to make sure your silhouette sells the normal map well, other wise your normal map will look terrible

[george.vas]

I find staying away from 90 degrees or lower leaves me with less things to clean up in my normal maps.

[Sordid23]

I found this little article about normal mapping.

http://www.bencloward.com/tutorials_normal_maps12.shtml

[JesseMoody]

george.vas is right. crazy right angles will really mess things up since the light rays don't know how to hit those angles. SO it's easier to do bevels than straight extrudes so you can set a little bit of an angle so the light rays can hit those and understand the change in shape and depth/height.

The silhouette is extremely important as well. It has to be able to contain the high poly and have enough detail in it so you aren't faking everything with the normal map.

[Frozan]

sweet ill work it out and figure out how to do it eventually. its so hard as a environment guy to do normal mapping on objects that have hard edges.