3Dsmax Tut - Generating Normal

Another little tutorial I wrote up real quick for my sister-in-law.

This explains how to generate a normal map from a highpoly mesh, for a lowpoly model.

Few Important Things:

*Your lowpoly model should be unwrapped. You don't have to worry about the high poly modeling being unwrapped.

*You CAN NOT have any overlapping UVs. Nothing can be mirrored and just use the same UVs. IT WILL NOT WORK. Normals can't work that way.

*Your highpoly reference does not have to be a single object. You can have lots of objects and generate a normal map onto your single low-poly object that makes it look like those seperate objects are all there on it. It's just important to make sure that your lowpoly mesh is basically the same shape as all your highpoly stuff. Also, you'll have to make sure that you "Pick" all of the objects you're projection from.

*Under Mapping Coordinates, make sure Use Existing channel is selected. Automatic Unwrap will look like ass and you won't be able to work with it. Plus it's a major waste of texture space.

*When you click render, the image it renders doesn't look like a normal map, but the file that it has saved will. Just open that file in photoshop to get a look at it.

*You will need to clean up your normal map in photoshop. It NEVER comes out perfect. Anything that is RED will need you to paint over it. Just select nearby colors and try to fix it as best as you can.