Q1 - Aanyone know why my baked Normal map is showing these colors and ideas on how to fix this?
Q2 - I increased the “Extrusion” by 0.1 and it’s looking better but still some artifacts (1, 2, 3) I’d like to get rid of.
Q3 - The “pink” mesh is my low poly. I realize the baking is only able to bake the depth of the sculpt but is there any way to get the "Normal’ map to have more depth?
Ok, here is my final high and low poly mesh. I’m pretty happy with the result and hope they look similar enough.
Lately i answered a question about a simple cube and cube with details, the solution was the main high-poly cube was the exact same size and just resizing the high poly by 1.0001 does the trick.
Lately i answered a question about a simple cube and cube with details, the solution was the main high-poly cube was the exact same size and just resizing the high poly by 1.0001 does the trick.
Yes, that’s what I’ve found. If, I’m correct, the bounced rays need some space to capture the sculpted mesh and bake the normal.
Hey I just exported the “Normal Map” (2048x2048) RGBA & Float Full (32 bit) .exr from Blender and it’s a whopping 86 mb. This seems huge. I could choose Float Half but then I’d be sacrificing quality (correct)
Is this huge file size normal? (no pun intended)
It’s huge for final asset at 2k. 8 bit dithered would be completely fine (even 8 bit without dithering) on a non glossy asset like this. You can keep it 32 bit while working on it, but for final asset it should be smaller.
There’s a cgcookie tutorial how to convert 32bit float from blender to 8 bit with dithering, with some mistakes in the article, but it explains the gist of it well enough.
https://cgcookie.com/articles/bit-depth-how-compression-affects-normal-maps
Read the article. Thanks. I will open the 32 mb .exr in Photoshop and save it as an 8 and 16 bit image and see the difference in file size and quality.
Question 1 - I want to open the.exr file and save it as an 16 bit or 8 bit Normal Map to lower the files size. When I open the .exr in Photoshop it asks me if I want to open .exr file as: “transparency” or “alpha channel”? I googled this and I cannot find an answer. Which one do I want?
Question 21 - I saved 3 different files and will try all on my model. (Note: Icould only save .exr format as a 32 bit no 16 or 8 bit) Which format and file size do you have experience using?
Normal_Map_32_bit.exr (83.9 mb)
Normal_Map_32_bit.tif (67.1 mb)
Normal_Map_16_bit.tif (33.6 mb)
Normal_Map_16_bit.png (4.7 mb)
Normal_Map_8_bit.png (2.1 mb)
Ok, so here are 4 different Normal Maps with huge variations in file size and type of file but I don’t see any visual difference in the quality of the render. Is there any reason to use a larger “Normal Map”?
Am I missing something here? Please explain!
Well, the difference between your low poly and your high poly is not that big, so here 8-bit (256 different values on each axis) are simply enough… Maybe the low poly can even have less than 790 faces…
Okidoki, yes. I agree. I tried for less poly’s but it distorted the shape too much but I think I could go a bit lower still and achieve the look I want.
So as a rule of thumb would you say use whatever “Normal Map” you need to to get the same look as your High poly mesh. If you can get your Normal Map to look identical on the low poly mesh, then go with the lowest file size.
That’s always the biggest question: how much (or less) do i have to do to reach my goal. 
Yup. Thanks for all of your help. Much appreciated! 
