Tip: Floating Geometry with Normal Mapping

by Jonathan Williamson

In this quick Blender 2.5 video tip I show you how to avoid complex topology on hard-surface objects to be normal mapped by using floating geometry. This can save a lot of time during the modeling process and yet still yields perfect normal maps.

You must be logged in to upload images. Register

Discussion

26 Responses to “Tip: Floating Geometry with Normal Mapping”
  1. aardvark
    Posts: 8

    This is very useful. Thanks a lot!

    #
    1
     Apr 9, 2011 at 12:37 am
    Reply
  2. RH2
    Posts: 11

    Easy shmeasy, try doing a tutorial on this method with ambient occlusion.

    #
    2
     Apr 9, 2011 at 12:49 am
    Reply
  3. gp123
    Posts: 84

    Just awesome, thanks , i can definitely use this !

    #
    3
     Apr 9, 2011 at 3:20 am
    Reply
  4. soren madsen
    Posts: 14

    Very useful, thx a lot!

    #
    4
     Apr 9, 2011 at 3:46 am
    Reply
  5. tumulousnewt
    Posts: 10

    Wow Jonathan, your like a tutorial machine you just don’t stop I don’t know how you have the time to do them when I struggle with the time to watch them, especially with the new Vehicle Training 3hrs in so far ;)

    To all who haven’t yet purchased or considering purchasing the vehicle training its well worth the money even at the full price even if not of use to you, it shows your support……. SO GO GET IT!!!!

    THANK YOU BLENDER COOKIE TEAM :)

    #
    5
     Apr 9, 2011 at 3:51 am
    Reply
  6. coredumped
    Posts: 4

    wow this is very useful. been creating textures for my game and this would be really useful

    #
    6
     Apr 9, 2011 at 5:10 am
    Reply
  7. cgxev
    Posts: 30

    thx.

    #
    7
     Apr 9, 2011 at 8:18 am
    Reply
  8. exmanko
    Posts: 10

    Wow, I’ve been doing tests in the past to achive that result with the same process and never got it working! all because of the Bias!

    Thanks a lot Jhonathan, really useful. You have made my day! :D

    #
    8
     Apr 9, 2011 at 9:41 am
    Reply
  9. floridajo
    Posts: 37

    Great tip, thanks for that.

    #
    9
     Apr 9, 2011 at 11:15 am
    Reply
  10. Don
    Posts: 7

    Thanks Jonathan,

    Very useful tip, thanks for this.

    Don

    #
    10
     Apr 9, 2011 at 11:42 pm
    Reply
  11. Daniel
    Posts: 13

    As soon as I saw “Floating geometry” in the title it suddenly clicked as to how I could get those complex shapes on my geometry! Thanks very much!

    #
    11
     Apr 10, 2011 at 12:25 am
    Reply
  12. ridgerunner
    Posts: 9

    again impressed
    this will be usefull for those making games that involve cars, buildings, or almost any static objects

    now for a request if i may
    translate this and the related models into a format that can be used by POSER, DAZ3D, bryce or almost any other software that sees blender as the devil encarnate
    it is time that they see this wonderous program for the wonderfull blessing that it is

    #
    12
     Apr 10, 2011 at 3:47 am
    Reply
  13. gusros60
    Posts: 13

    Hi, i was just wandering how you got people to actually visit you site? i have two web sites:
    one about the 3d world:
    http://www.squidoo.com/draw-and-paint-in-small-steps
    and one promoting a great “learn to play guitar sheet music” course:
    http://www.squidoo.com/learn-guitar-sheet-music
    any tips would be a great!
    thank you,
    Gus Rosie

    #
    13
     Apr 11, 2011 at 8:33 am
    Reply
  14. Eagleshadow
    Posts: 1

    Wow thanks a lot, finally something that I totally didn’t know :D

    #
    14
     Apr 11, 2011 at 10:35 am
    Reply
  15. Roger
    Posts: 6

    I dont get it to work…
    added a plane with some additional elements (all in one object) with the “same-level on z border” and another plane (new object). selected the first, complex object and then the simple and bake (with bais on 1 and all in the correct distance).

    all i get a blue image?

    could we get the .blend file please?

    #
    15
     Apr 11, 2011 at 11:46 am
    Reply
    • jonathanwilliamson
      Posts: 1761

      Did you check the “Selected to Active” option under the baking tab?

      -Jonathan

      #
      15.1
       Apr 11, 2011 at 1:29 pm
      Reply
      • Roger
        Posts: 6

        yes i did and checked twice that i have the correct selection order (first the complex one, second the simple plane)

        #
        15.1.1
         Apr 11, 2011 at 1:56 pm
      • jonathanwilliamson
        Posts: 1761

        What about increasing the bias? If the bias is at zero the floating geometry is likely to barely be within range.

        -Jonathan

        #
         Apr 11, 2011 at 9:56 pm
      • Moolah
        Posts: 59

        Probably there are some bugs in the Bake code. I got strange things… that first time baking a sphere to a plane was good and after this I tried to bake some tubes (made from curves) – I got very bad results with some extensive blackness.. Tweaking bias down changes something… but then the result looks not so expressed.
        I think that baking in Blender is still a tricky thing.
        P.S. But I got baking anyway… no “only blue image”. BTW – if the object to bake from isn’t checked with “render” then it will not be baked.

        #
        15.1.2
         Apr 12, 2011 at 2:42 pm
    • rinsable
      Posts: 5

      Are you guys making sure that the bias is enough to cover the entire object? Remember, 1.000 bias is one blender unit. Possibly your objects are to big for a bias of one?

      #
      15.2
       Apr 15, 2011 at 11:39 pm
      Reply
  16. Bignose_on_nes
    Posts: 2

    Time to make an AT-AT walker, or any complicated piece of machinery. Thanks for this awesome tip!

    #
    16
     Apr 12, 2011 at 1:25 pm
    Reply
    • Moolah
      Posts: 59

      I tried this yesterday on not very difficult geometry… but not plain. And I got very bad results… Please, post your results when you’ll create these AT-ATs.

      #
      16.1
       Apr 12, 2011 at 2:43 pm
      Reply
  17. sendercorp
    Posts: 219

    This is one fantastic tutorial thank you .
    Greetings from Istanbul :)

    #
    17
     Apr 16, 2011 at 4:19 pm
    Reply
  18. Ciriaco
    Posts: 1

    I’ve tried also and I think that there is a bug ( 2.57, bias:1, Selected to active)

    #
    18
     Apr 18, 2011 at 5:46 am
    Reply
  19. Maia
    Posts: 10

    What kind of errors might I see if I tried to use this on a softer type object? I want to overlay a “knitted” normal map onto a doll to make her look knitted with relatively low amount of polys.

    #
    19
     Nov 10, 2011 at 1:10 pm
    Reply
  20. Clayton Walker
    Posts: 1

    Eat3D did a nice little floating geometry tutorial as well. He, however, suggested that if you placed the low poly plane ABOVE the floating geometry object(s), and then baked everything to the top-most plane, you wouldn’t have to go through the Bias option.
    I’ve tried both methods, and the one he suggested produced a normal map with the least amount of incorrect random pixels.
    Just a head’s up.

    Thanks for the tutorial!

    #
    20
     Feb 29, 2012 at 10:15 am
    Reply

Leave a Comment