I’m a bit new towards the graphic design side of game development. I was wondering if anyone had any resources on the process of designing normal maps for static meshes. I know photoshop can be a great tool for making normal maps and I’ve heard Mudbox is fantastic for painting and sculpting 3D assets. What software would be the best place to start designing normal maps?
Generating Normal Maps
This heavily depends on what are you creating … also on tools you prefer to use, for me:
- For generic tile-able materials I use mostly Substance Designer.
- For detail normal painting I prefer to use mostly Substance Painter.
- For baking normal maps between high-poly and low-poly geometry, I use Blender.
- For quick normal map generation one can use (although I dislike it) PolyBump or similar generator
I have tried Mudbox in the past - and it's a fine sculpting software that can do normal map baking between different levels of detail. But I somehow found it lacking in poly modelling (it has none) - and you have to go back and forth. Blender has pretty much all I need for both, and once you get through the UI, shortcuts, etc. (which can be a bit of pain .. but the UI got a LOT better over time) - it's one of the best tools out there (this is subjective - and ask 10 different people and you will get 10 different answers on what software they prefer).
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement
