A simple tutorial on how to bake normal maps inside of maya using zbrush to create the highpoly model and maya's transfer maps to bake the normal map from the highpoly to the lowpoly. Hope it helps, lets see some awesome normal maps!
please use HD and full screen, that's what its intended for
I'll remember this, thanks.
wow! Zbrush is.. cool :D
I use Zbrush all the time. The Zmapper plug-in does all the normal map baking for you right inside Zbrush itself. Just as long as your lower subdivision level has a decent UV map layout, you're good as golden. Plus Zmapper has the ability to tweak, save and load program specific configurations so your normal maps work as you intended with the desired program.
Doesn't mean, though, that the transfer maps tool in maya is worthless then. Say for instance you happened to build something with multiple parts and wanted all the details combined into one normal map, this would be the tool I would turn to. It's also great to be able to transfer maya's generated textures (the 3D textures don't rely on the UV layout) onto a usable mapped texture. This tool is also excellent for creating occlusion maps from a high poly object as well. Just saying that the 1:1 baking of a normal map is much easier achieved within Zbrush, especially since (on my machine at least) maya tends to crap out when smacked by a model bearing 400k or more polygons where as Zbrush for me can handle up to 8 million (though I generally stay within 1-5 million).
yes this is just one way of doing it i will make a tutorial for z-mapper when i get a better mic
@willy-wilson Thanks a lot mate!
Pretty sweet. I was wondering how you would do this with a cube. I can't get it looking nice myself. Could you possibly create a tutorial for normal mapping hard surface models? Thanks for the great tutorial!