Notice the strange swirly mosaic tiled look to the middle cube. If we leave everything as is and bake with this default lower bit depth, we can get problems such as these…
Here are our default new image settings below, notice the unchecked 32 bit float checkbox meaning our new image will be 8 bit. 8 bit images aren’t optimal for normal/bump images. PROBLEM 1: The default image settings i.e. So to immunise ourselves to all of this we’re going to hold these problems betwixt tweezers for inspection!
That means it isn’t always immediately obvious what the problem with the bump/normal map might be, where the problem stems from or how to fix it. Well, actually in this context probably a mathematician could easily tell us BUT! The point is from an artist’s point of view there are some bumps to navigate so the process can be smoother (gotta love a 3D pun to get us started!)īEWARE! Before we let our guard down after some slick puns let’s not forget why we’re here! The dangers of bump/normal maps are that we don’t directly see them like we would a color map, instead we see more how the light bouncing off the surface has changed because of them. Hi, Aidy Burrows here, bump map creation can itself be a bumpy ride and as for normal maps? Who can say what normal really is anyway?! If you happen to be new to the baking process in Blender see the end of the article (problem 5!) for tips on generating a simple normal/bump map from both a shader and another object.