hi
I want to make a 3D print of a game character (Dota2 naix)
but the model i got doesnt have that much detail but it has a normal so i wonder if it is possible to get the detail from the normal back on the mesh?
plus is it possible to apply a pose to a mesh?
Yes and maybe. You could bake a displacement map and use that in displacement modifier which affects the mesh.
But displacement needs (a lot of) geometry to show the details and the easiest way to do that is with subdivision modifiers (multiresolution/subdivision surface). The maybe comes from the mesh itself which most likely is triangulated and that won’t subdivide nicely. You could try it though. Could also try dynamic topology sculpting and flood the detailed areas with geometry. You can do that for example using clay strip brush, 0 strength (so that it doesn’t actually sculpt the mesh) and with low detail size.
Yes. Apply the armature modifier.
Ty 
thats why i like blender. !!community FTW!!
Except that I forgot dynamic topology sculpting destroys UV’s, so can’t use that unless you have some other way of mapping the coordinates. Some rework might be inevitable, turning triangulated model into quads (alt+J) and making the mesh sane before subdivision.
You could bake a displacement map and use that in displacement modifier which affects the mesh.
Bake a displacement map from what?
I guess there is only a tangent space normal map.
Such maps don’t have the needed information.
OK, maybe you could use the B (of RGB) channel as a depth map. Better not. It is a wrong 8 bit map.
IMO, you can’t 3dprint it. The needed information is missing.
Right. Looks like it can’t make an approximation from normal -> displacement. Just assumed it could, without checking.
since i only need surface detail i ll just convert the normal via crazybump or something similar and work it over with ps until i get it to a decent point (like scratching the detail into the surface) and do a quick little modeling for some areas