Normal Mapping inside of Maya

[1000beasties]

Great tutorial, thanks

[aj2jjworld007]

sir very good tut. really help me...

[Brygelsmack]

Hey, I'm making a cog in Maya. I have a high poly and a low poly model in my perspective viewport. Can I use this technique for the normal map?

[Anhslaught]

Hi, I followed the tutorial just right, but my normals come out really dark. The only way I could see it is if I turn on lighting, and set a bright light on it. What am i doing wrong?

[SilverGunZoO]

except alpha map, I had no idea what a map is, now I understand what a normal and bump map is thanks to you

[BlueVane]

I'm suddenly getting very worried about my upcoming College course in 3D Animation!

[nameno1elsehas]

thanks for clearing that up, but what is the difference between a normal map and a bump map? could you please clarify? thanks

[PolyNurb]

Well there's quite a few differences, bump maps are grayscale textures, with I believe 256 shades of gray value, to basically fake the appearance of detail on a polygon surface. A normal map is an RGB map with thousands or millions of color values in it, so you can get quite a bit more detail in a normal map. Normal maps perturb the surface normals, so that light bounces off of it as if there were geometry details on a surface. Bump maps do something similar only with far less detail.

[nameno1elsehas]

@PolyNurb so if you applied a normal map to an object like the one in your vid, would the bolts on the mapped object project shadows?

[PolyNurb]

@nameno1elsehas Yes they do cast shadows, and they also receive specular highlights, and shade just as if it was actual geometry.

[ksisneh]

gr8 tutor

[PolyNurb]

@ksisneh Why thank you, I try to do my part in passing on the knowledge I have.

[djkorova]

You just demystified normal mapping for me! Thank you!!

[ehsu84]

Hi good basic tutorial. I have a problem though I followed the tutorial exactly but when I render it out the rounded bolts appear flat why is this happening?

If you can help that would be great

[gmstmichel]

I keep trying to get this to work, i get my "bolts" to tranfer, but the actual edge doesn't. i'm curious if you know if the overall scale of both objects need to be "realsize" or not.

And for the others who say they can't see it, make sure you hit six to have see texture

[PolyNurb]

gmstmichel,

Sounds like an issue perhaps with the distance for the envelope maybe? Like possibly these edges are outside of the envelope and not being calculated in? I don't know what edges your talking about, maybe the beveled edges on the door?

[gmstmichel]

Yeah, the beveled edges is what I'm talking about. I have the little spheres which sit on this edge transfer but not the edge. I have my envelope like you have shown.

[motive187]

I've had this problem ever since I saw some tutorials on this technique. Ever time I try to do this I end up with a blank normal map. I've even recreated this scene exactly and I still come up with a solid blue normal map. Any ideas?

[thepryest]

how do i get the perspective window to show my model with the normal map applied? when i choose renderer->high quality rendering, my object is black! is there a way to get it to work properly?

[motive187]

Make sure hardware texturing is clicked on as well under the shading tab.

[pb3animator]

Thanks for the Tutorial. 

Best wishes on your future projects.

:)

[Cadmium77]

That's awesome. Much easier than going the Zbrush route I think. It's more explicit somehow.

It's particularly nice if you're going to retopologize since Maya has the "Make Live" tool that you can use in conjunction with the "Append Polygon To Shell" tool to do that in a way that is actually nicer to use than the Zbrush retopology tool.

You just solved a vexatious problem for me. Thanks a lot.

[PolyNurb]

gaypotter, Honestly it sounds like a video card glitch...try importing that model into a game engine or something or even Crazybump to view the normal map on the low res model inside of Crazybump. If it isn't maybe something corrupted in the process I duno.

[koalabrownie]

thank you, I love you.

Finally I understand.

[Wanderer2021]

you've no idea how happy you've made me just now by having this tutorial. I thought I was stuck using max to do this. glad I'm wrong

[duhitv]

what plugin you have used to generate normal map in maya

[SteveRedFox]

Really good tutorial ! cheers

[gaypotter]

hi! cheers for the tutorial, BUT! i am having some problems. i think it worked ok the first time i did it, but ever since it has been gong crazy! the low poly plane has jaggy bits all over it and so does the high poly one after the baking. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?! i have quite a slow laptop could that have something to do with it?

[pixelbudah]

Amazing tutorial mate, Thank you so much.

[Mirmidon87]

im a noob in this, but..what is the purpouse of mapping ??? is it for adding like a "texture" to the object ?? like if it was a metal piece of something..or what ?

Thnks you

[awrawrwar]

Think of normal mapping as a way of putting extra details to your model without the higher poly count.

[masterpiraka]

Ever played gears of war? EVERYTHING in that game is normal mapped.

[koalabrownie]

It's basically a way to make a low poly mesh look hi-poly without actually making it high poly. Thus with lower poly counts the games can play faster while still retaining the detail.

[ALJ029]

Great tutorial! and well explained too. this should help me with my character modeling. :)

[hanxopx]

Thank you very mucccccccccccccccccccccccccccc­chhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[Fr0z1nDuDe]

really nice tutorial... thanks for uploading it!

[angryoreo]

hi PolyNurb, thanks for the great tutorial. I tried it and it worked when i projected detail onto a single poly plane like you had done. But i had a problem when i tried to use this same technique on something cube in shape, i wanted the detail from all around the high res shape to be put all around the low res shape, but it didnt seem to be working, but when ever i do normal maps on single plane objects though the tutorial works perfectly. Is it something i have to change with the envelope?

[fieryeyedmonkey]

you have to make sure the envelope is 'outside' of the target mesh all over. You can change the target display to 'show envelope' and edit the envelope directly by moving edges, verts, and faces such that no part of the source mesh intersect the target envelope. Just make sure that with a closed 3D object when viewing the envelope it completely encloses the source mesh.

I should mention that you will want to alter the proprtions of the envelope as little as possible to get an accurate map.

[PolyNurb]

Blahhhhhhhhh,

Sounds like you must have done something in reverse actually. Check the meshes you are choosing as the high res one and the low res one. The objective is to bake the normals from the smoothed, high res mesh into the boxy low res mesh....you may also want to check the cage or the "envelope" as maya calls it and make sure it covers both meshes. If it has some parts of a mesh penetrating outside of the envelope you will have issues.

[Blahhhhhhhhh]

Brilliant tutorial! I'm new to maya and have made a character in max and zbrush, and seeing as it takes hours to import a big .obj into max I've followed your tutorial just to make the normals for my character model.  And its worked great, except the boxiness of the low res model seems to have been baked into the normals. except for this everything else is better than max, have you got a way of smoothing it out?

[kiriyama1]

excellent tutorial, thanks for uploading, if you haven't already how about putting a vid of normal mapping something cylindrical such as a character head or a body or something!?

[ajcatz]

Kallen3330,

You're Video Card should work.. if it appears like its not, make sure that you are using 'hardware texturing' under the 'shading' menu in your view-port.

[Kallen3330]

I have a Nvidia geforce 7950 gt with 512mb of memory. Is it something that conflicts with nvidia?

[PolyNurb]

Kallen3330,

Normally this simply means your video card doesn't support displaying the normal maps in the viewport...what type of video card..manufacturer and the memory amount is it?

[Kallen3330]

Hey, I've gotten this to work with my project, but it doesn't display the normal map when I go to render>high quality, it will only display if I physically render it.

Being able to see it w/o rendering all the time would be helpful, so... could you help me out?

[apollux333]

Thank You!

[PolyNurb]

Keemanabool,

Head normal mapping works the same as any other kind of normal mapping...the theory and principle is the exact same...however a head is very cylindrical so like all roundish objects the projects and UVS are always a challenge when it comes to any kind of mapping...be it color, bump, normal, etc.

[TerraScythe]

Great tutorial! I've been having trouble with those for ages!

[Keemanabool]

What about Head normal mapping which I would think is the same for the rest of the body?

[gannonroader]

Thank you for posting this! It's actually pretty hard to find any info on normal mapping in maya.

[PolyNurb]

thepryest,

Yeah some video cards and drivers with Maya do cause flickering or wierd artifacts when displaying in the viewport. It's normal..sometimes finding older drivers for your video card sorts that out. Hey feel lucky...a lot of folks video cards won't even display alpha, transparency or bump/normal maps in the viewport.

[orlannovak]

Thanks man, great tutorial you saved my life :D

[MDSJudicator]

Thanks dude. I never really understood what 'envelope' refers to.

[coatlfx]

Very nice!

This really clears a lot of things about normal maps which I thought would be extremely complicated, thanks to you of course!

[MtgKirin]

U rock my sox!!!

have no idea how long been trying to learn this.

[arpeeyaw]

Thank youuuuu sooo much, I have been looking for this info for like ever :(!!!. But it made my day thank you!. PolyNurb, are you able to transfer details from a nurbs object to it's converted to poly object? It's just that I have alot of details lost when I converted my object to poly, It doesn't help too even if I bump up the number of polygons, the details just doesn't look the way it was when it is still a nurbs...pls message me when you get to my message. Thanks alot for this help.

[thepryest]

You are the man!!! I commented on this tutorial earlier but it didn't show up. It worked for me perfectly! The only thing though is that it flickers for me when I have it in high quality rendering, for displaying on the fly (must be my graphics card???). You should do lost of these small tutorials, your excellent. Im going to look through your posted videos right now!!!

[condor112]

dude thats freakinf ridicoulus,

you have one face left, amazing.

also i like the fact that you pointed out,

"hold down the right mouse button and assign new material".

awsome

[floydbishop]

Thanks for the great tutorial!