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Can anyone tell me how to create Normal maps? Solved

GlennFGlennF Posts: 141
edited February 2018 in The Commons

I am trying to creat normal maps for geoshells.

Post edited by GlennF on

Comments

  • BradCarstenBradCarsten Posts: 856

    this is quite a good online generator

  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    GlennF said:

    I am trying to creat normal maps for geoshells.

    If you own Photoshop, Nvidia has a free plugin. I don't use Gimp, so I can't say if it works with Gimp or not.

    A fairly decent standalone free program is njob, though you can't view the image at reduced size, which can be a bit of a pain with large images. And as far as I can tell, the creator is no longer developing njob, but as I said, it's free and you don't have to have photoshop.

    NormalMap-Online, linked to above by bradrg, works well, but it does have a size limitation. Images of 4096x4096, for example, will be truncated.

    My personal favorite is the Nvidia plugin, but if you don't have photoshop, my recommendation would be njob. For now, at least.

  • Silent WinterSilent Winter Posts: 3,809
    edited February 2018

    Gimp has a normal map plugin (can't remember where though - a search should bring it up) - lots of options for different types of conversion.

    Making a grey-scale height-map and converting it to a normal map in Gimp is easy enough.

    There's also Awesome Bump which can convert between height and normal maps

    https://github.com/kmkolasinski/AwesomeBump

    Post edited by Silent Winter on
  • GlennFGlennF Posts: 141

    Thank you everyone for the links.

    Gonna give them all a try.

  • FSMCDesignsFSMCDesigns Posts: 12,807

    Many ways to do this. Photoshop plugin, GIMP plugin, other stand alone apps such as Xnormal http://www.xnormal.net/

  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496

    In addition to the above, which are all great suggestions, Substance Painter will let you paint a height map right on the object and then bake out a normal map from it and I imagine that Blacksmith3D will too (just an educated guess on that since though I've never used Blacksmith3D). Those are both paid options though, so for a one-off project they might not be worth the cost and time to learn them.

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 6,018
    bradrg said:

    this is quite a good online generator

    Looks very handy! thanks for the link

  • KerwinKerwin Posts: 124

    I tend to use xNormal and Zbrush, but I'm pretty old school...

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715

    There is also Crazy Bump, although I've not seen mention of it for a long time

  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,939
    edited February 2018

    Another good one is Shader Map 4, free for non-commercial use. https://shadermap.com/home/

    Post edited by Bunyip02 on
  • Hiro ProtagonistHiro Protagonist Posts: 699
    edited February 2018
    Bunyip02 said:

    Another good one is Shader Map 4, free for non-commercial use. https://shadermap.com/home/

    I've been using Shadermap for years, from back when it was command line, and I have a paid-for version (and I've had my money's worth, I think!). I get the impression from the comparison chart, though, that the free version places watermarks on the maps. Am I missing something?

    Post edited by Hiro Protagonist on
  • GlennFGlennF Posts: 141

    Thank You Everyone for the help. I've got what I need now.

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