#normalmap

[altanimator]

Billboards from my "WIP" side-3 #fanart #wip #gundam #eva13 #superzaku #lowpoly #blender3d #gimp #eevee #plane #normalmap #hdri #intel #hd4000 #myart #artistoninstagram #altanimator (at Principality of Zeon) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp5cjy5yd8W/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[scumsoda]

i havent had much time to work on my game since school started, but here is a crumb 

i also plan to change the art style, 

[chinykian]

Trying out something new for future projects! Hand-drew a normal map and implemented lighting. Instead of shading the sprite by simply making pixels lighter or darker, I opted to shift the hue instead. How’s it look?

[anneshka3d]

This prop I have made for fun. Hope you will like it. 

[cullynite]

I was asked by a fellow modder to explain how to make a good normal-map. So, here’s the steps.

I first used another plugin first, from NVIDIA (from DAI-modding) to make it look like this (small window in pic 1)

Then, I edited the channels to make them look like in the pics 2-4

And save in the format on the last pic.

[xponentialdesign]

#everyday textured glow paste @AnimatedLoop #trapcodeTAO seamless setup

[danielstuddert-blog]

Making Materials, Making Maps

Now admittedly I am a little late with this, been juggling extra days at work and being a lottle under the weather, so let's dive right on in...

This week included learning more about unity materials with a crash course on their creation and the types of maps that can be applied to them.

Starting off simple and with only adjusting the Albedo (Colour), how reflective an item is (Metallic Slider) and how much micro detail an object has (Smoothness Slider) our 1st task was to make gold, silver, bronze and copper.

                                                      My Results

Taking what we learnt from here and building on previous knowledge of texture making the next challenge was making stone, with the addition of a normal and a height map. Which enable the materials shader to add some extra roughness and height to a surface without adding any extra to the polygon count of a mesh by adjusting the way light interacts and bounces off of a surface

    Stone Texture                        Normal Map                              Height Map

                                                      All together

Emission maps were next, these tell the shader not to include the area in light calculations, instead, the area will act as if it is a source of light.

 Brick Texture             Normal Map               Height Map               Emission Map

                                           All together with a blue tint

[yougashnaidu]

WIP: Baking Started + Fixing Shading/Normal Map Seams (Face Normals Issue)

Overview

Today I started the baking process for my hero prop and ran into a shading problem that affected the normal maps. When I checked the baked normal map and previewed the low-poly in render view, I could clearly see mesh lines / hard edges showing up across the surface, especially on the skull area. This made the model look faceted and “broken” instead of smooth and clean.

Problem I Faced

While baking, the normal map was capturing visible polygon/edge lines. In the render preview, the shading also looked inconsistent and I could see the low-poly edges more than I should. After checking the mesh, I realised the issue was coming from face normals / smoothing (how the model is shading across surfaces). Because the shading wasn’t set up correctly, the bake was basically baking those shading problems into the normal map.

Research & Solution

To solve this, I researched the issue and found a tutorial that explained a clean workflow using weighted normals to improve shading and reduce visible seams/edges.

Tutorial used: Christopher 3D — “Weighted Normals” https://youtu.be/60E-26Ydbh8?si=EvjvVA3tln_yfHOA

What I Learned (Weighted Normals Workflow)

From this tutorial, I learned a better workflow to get cleaner shading and bakes:

Enable Auto Smooth: Turn on auto smoothing so the object shades based on an angle threshold. This helps control where smoothing should break.

Use a Weighted Normals approach: Apply a weighted normals workflow so smaller angled polygons inherit shading from the larger flat faces they connect to. This helps keep surfaces looking visually flatter and cleaner.

Keep Sharp / respect hard edges: Make sure sharp edges are respected so the shading doesn’t “melt” across areas that should stay crisp.

Manual refinement (Mark Sharp if needed): If the shading still looks wrong in certain spots, manually mark those edges as sharp so the smoothing breaks correctly.

Fix special cases: For tricky areas where shading is still weird, adding a small supporting loop can help control how the surface shades.

Finalise for export: Once everything looks correct, the normals data can be finalised so the shading stays consistent when the model is moved to other software.

Result

After applying this workflow, the shading became much cleaner and the mesh lines were greatly reduced in both the normal map and render preview. This made the bake look more solid and helped the skull surface read smoother, which is important because it’s a hero detail that will be seen up close.

Next Steps

Re-bake the full set of maps with the corrected shading (Normal/AO/Curvature, etc.)

Check the prop under different lighting to confirm the seams are gone

Move toward texturing once the bakes are clean and consistent

References

Epic Armoury (n.d.) Bone Chopper – 100 cm. Available at: https://epicarmoury.com/products/1916-bone-chopper-100-cm

Christopher 3D (202x) Weighted normals workflow (YouTube video). Available at: https://youtu.be/60E-26Ydbh8