Creating Next-Gen Game Items with Blender: A Tutorial on Normal Mapping
In this tutorial, we will explore how to create normal maps using Blender, a powerful and free 3D modeling software. We will cover the entire process, from setting up our scene to final rendering and texturing.
Setting Up Our Scene
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To begin, we need to set up our scene in Blender. This includes creating a new project, setting the resolution and frame rate, and adding some basic geometry. In this case, we are going to create a simple wooden board with a smooth surface. We add a plane mesh and scale it down to fit our needs.
Adding Texture
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Next, we need to add texture to our board. We import a wood texture image and set it as the active texture in our scene. We then use the paint tool to remove any unwanted parts of the texture that do not match the shape of our board. This is an important step in creating a realistic normal map.
Creating a Normal Map
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Now, we can create a normal map using Blender's built-in normal mapping feature. To do this, we need to select the plane mesh and go to the Materials tab. We then create a new material and set its texture mode to "Normal". Next, we adjust some settings in the material properties panel to control how the normal map is calculated.
Baking the Normal Map
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Once we have our normal map set up, we need to bake it into the mesh. To do this, we go to the Materials tab and select the plane mesh. We then click on the "Bake" button in the properties panel. This will calculate the normal map and save it to the mesh.
Applying the Normal Map
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Now that our normal map is baked, we can apply it to our board. To do this, we go to the Materials tab and select the plane mesh. We then click on the "Apply" button in the properties panel. This will save the normal map as a material property of the mesh.
Rendering and Texturing
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With our normal map applied, we can now render our scene. We set up some basic lighting and camera settings and render the scene using Blender's built-in rendering engine. Once the render is complete, we open it in a texture editor like GIMP or Photoshop to adjust the colors and brightness of the image.
Texturing with a Diffuse Map
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In this next part of our tutorial series, we will be showing you how to create a diffuse map using Blender. We will use the same wood texture that we used earlier, but this time we will paint it ourselves to create a more realistic look.
Creating a Specular Map
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Finally, in the third and final part of our tutorial series, we will be showing you how to create a specular map using Blender. This is an advanced technique that requires some knowledge of lighting and materials, but the results are well worth the effort.
Conclusion
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In this tutorial, we have covered the basics of creating normal maps using Blender. We hope that this tutorial has been helpful in teaching you how to get started with normal mapping in Blender. Remember, practice makes perfect, so be sure to experiment with different techniques and settings to achieve the best results.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone this is firebeard 854 and today I'll be doing a blender tutorial on how to make nextg game items including how to fake geometry and create a board that used to look like this these are actually the same on of faces and fake it to look like this so I'm just going to start up by closing that now first thing uh you kind of want to do is create another little file over here otherwise it's going to be really hard to take care of everything so I'm going to open up the uh default blender scene there we go I'm just going to start a new file awesome and we just have the default scene right here the cube in the metal I'm just going to delete this Cube press seven and then press five five seven brings you into top view and then five brings you into orthographic I always try and model in orthographic because I just don't like that perspective Distortion so we're just going to start off by pressing shift a and then add a plane and then press tab to tab over into edit mode and then we're just going to start by pressing s and then y move that out a bit one about two blender units should work so we can actually hit s y and then two and then we can just hit e for extrude and then we can just pull that up a bit it automatically does it against the z-axis which is convenient we want right about there it has to be a realistic looking board so if you have to type everything in I do it at about3 okay now what we have to do is UV map it so I don't really like the whole default menu for UV editing I just prefer to bring this over into a separate View and then just open up the UV editor there we are UV image editor press new and this is not a tutorial on UV mapping so I'm not going to go into detail or do anything extreme so I'm just going to press a and then U to unwrap and just do a smart UV project very useful tool just press okay and there we go it's unwrapped then we want to just hit image sorry new and okay and there we go we have this unwrapped into a black background so now let's just head back into object mode hit shift d to duplicate it and then we want to go over to our outliner and then just make one of these uh unclickable and unviewable and then click on the corresponding one and this is going to be our high res model or arst model and then we're going to press tab to go back into edit mode and then press W subdivide subdivide subdivide and maybe one more time and then these edges right here are actually becoming subdivided a lot faster than the top because there are more polygons in the original so just press 7 and then Z and then a to deselect them and make it so that we can click through we also want to click face mode maybe scroll up a bit pull on down there we go and now that we have both of those sides selected we're just going to subdivide that some more and yes to new experts out there that did create some Tris along the edges that doesn't matter because this is just our arst copy so maybe one more time for fun you want to go into it start slowing down your computer so head over to scul mode and now comes the fun part you actually need to find an image in order to sculp onto this and to do this I just use Google let's see image result and I just found this picture of wood and then I downloaded this picture of wood and I have it right here in this folder and now the interesting thing is there's this program right here called SS bump generator 5.3 and now it actually uses crtical it's definite plus anyways this program is great at baking things from ambient inclusion maps to normal maps and even making simple gray scale or height Maps so this is actually the easiest function that it does you can just click right here this is a free download this just opens it up and I'm already in the file I just click on whatever I want to be converted press open and it makes a height map right there and as you can see that's a gray scale volum app and that can be used for sculpting onto the objects so I'm just going to go back to my blender scene there we are and now I have to go and open that up under the material no the textures panel and I have to click right here in the little paint brush and then hit new and then go down here and hit image or movie then under that we just want to open up we're head on over to our board folder and grab that height map image open that okay now we just want to up that radius a lot even more and up the strength a bit not too much you don't want too much deformation and I'm not actually going to apply a symmetry to this simply because me affecting the top and such a small object between the top faces and the bottom faces is already going to affect the bottom phes yes it be a negative value but it will still give it a realistic texture so I'm just going to click once up here then click once down here and we have some really nice well deformation there and I and I'll let it keep this it is a bit um a bit much if if you ask me but uh when you when we do our normal mapping we kind of want a lot so then you actually get the full effect so then we will head back to let's go to object mode smooth it out that just adds a smooth modifier to the shadings gives a nice effect we can actually also go into Scot mode press one and then just down the radius size a bit and we just want to get the oh it's the texture again and we really just want to get the sides to have some kind of a deformation to it maybe not as much as the other ones because it can uh get you some unwanted results in the edges if you give it basically the same you get some fighting especially in the normal map so just something out of the or maybe grab a couple areas out just really want a definite normal map because the focus of the image is going to be on the top and even the bottom okay now back to object mode now what we're going to do is bake the normal map so make it so that the other one appears as well we are going to click on the high detailed a copy of the plan and we are just going to click on it and then shift click onto the other one in the outlier and you need them to both be at the same area and if they're not you can just go here and clear all of these values to zero on both of them and it'll make it so they both occupy the same space and then we're going to go over to the render tab go all the way down and you will notice the little area little tab that says bake we want to click right there we don't want a full render instead we simply want a normal map and then we just want selected to active there we go and now we just press bake it should just take a matter of seconds depending on what kind of a system you have and there we go an effective normal map so now we what we have to do is apply that normal map so right now it is actually saved into the temp files and if we keep it saved in the temp files then we could run into issues if we try and apply more of them that those temp files get cleared out and we'll have a hard time finding them or bringing them back so simple thing to do is just to save a copy I like to save a copy to the same folder and make sure you give it a name you could just go board underscore normal and it might take a little bit to save a PNG so now that you have that saved you can actually just make it so that the uh High the highway one is both unseeable and un renderable okay now we want to go and keep that selected go and add a material and then add a texture and then the under the texture just hit image or movie just like before and we're just going to go and locate it under boards and you can actually bookmark these very convenient open that right up now these are some well very careful settings so if you need to pause the video and write it down or just look back and forth very quickly we have to hit UV for coordinates so it's actually going to take coordinates from here other than just trying to map it out along the whole thing by itself itself and then down here we're going to hit normal instead of color because this this is not a diffuse map it will affect the geometry or at least fake it in and then another very important one is under image sampling hit normal map and make sure this is on tangent for tangent space normals and now we can take our camera and press F12 and you should see a nice normal map of this object that is all fake geometry none of that is real so it's very easy to work with and that's another reason to do to it too in such animations so I mean we can turn it and it still gives you the same result thank you again for watching this tutorial and that is how you make a normal map with blender this is actually the first in a series of three in the next uh part of this tutorial I will be showing you how to texture it using a diffuse map we're painted ourselves with that same wood texture so don't lose it and then uh in the third tutorial I'll be showing you how to create a specular map and then setting up some nice lighting to show it off\n"
