Blog 33: xNormal for Efficient Map Baking
For baking hair strand texture maps, I relied on xNormal — a free, reliable, and industry-recognized baking tool. While many modern plugins offer full-featured baking workflows, xNormal remains an efficient solution used even in AAA pipelines for its accuracy and speed. I used it to bake my high poly ZBrush strands into maps (normal, AO, height, alpha), then exported clean results to Photoshop for further edits.
This was my first time using xNormal, and I found it extremely helpful. It’s free, accurate, and surprisingly easy to use once I understood the input setup. I used xNormal extensively for baking the hair textures and also for prop elements like the staff and accessories. In the hair card workflow especially, it allowed me to bring in my high poly sculpted strands from ZBrush and bake them over low poly planes. This was a key step to creating realistic hair texture maps that could be reused across the beard, eyebrows, and flyaway systems.
Reference:
xNormal. (n.d.). xNormal - baking tool. Available at: https://xnormal.net
