I’m a bit new towards the graphic design side of game development. I was wondering if anyone had any resources on the process of designing normal maps for static meshes. I know photoshop can be a great tool for making normal maps and I’ve heard Mudbox is fantastic for painting and sculpting 3D assets. What software would be the best place to start designing normal maps?
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Generating Normal Maps
This heavily depends on what are you creating … also on tools you prefer to use, for me:
- For generic tile-able materials I use mostly Substance Designer.
- For detail normal painting I prefer to use mostly Substance Painter.
- For baking normal maps between high-poly and low-poly geometry, I use Blender.
- For quick normal map generation one can use (although I dislike it) PolyBump or similar generator
I have tried Mudbox in the past - and it's a fine sculpting software that can do normal map baking between different levels of detail. But I somehow found it lacking in poly modelling (it has none) - and you have to go back and forth. Blender has pretty much all I need for both, and once you get through the UI, shortcuts, etc. (which can be a bit of pain .. but the UI got a LOT better over time) - it's one of the best tools out there (this is subjective - and ask 10 different people and you will get 10 different answers on what software they prefer).