Hi there,

I would like to create a high poly mesh in Blender and use xNormal to generate a normal map from it for a low poly version of the same mesh.

Does somebody have experience in how good Blender and xNormal work together?

And another related question: Is it important in what order the high and the low poly mesh are created?
Intuitional I would madel the low poly mesh first and use sculpting tools to add the details.

Thanks in advance

they work fine, I've done it several times.

you don't need to use xnormal

you bake normal map in blender ctrl +alt+b and they will ask you want you want to bake then set normal an you'll see

then normal maps that blender makes are setup wrong, the rgb colors are mixed up wrong, plus x normals allows you to view how your normal map will look in real time, plus it adds a lot of other options.

i don't think they're mixed up wrong; they are the correct normals but in object-space coordinates. tangent space normals are much harder and different to calculate and so blender doesn't do it for you; so yeah, lostclimate's right that you should still use xNormal.

but if you have an object-space normal-map shader on an unanimated model, not only will it look just as great, but you can get all the info you need straight out of blender and it will run faster in-game.

things like trees, barrels, rigid car chassis; anything that doesn't need significant animation could use blender's baked object-space normals i reckon.

julz

for me it seems like the shading is messed up using blenders tho, thats why I thought they just had a differnt rgb setup....

All right, thank you very much! I'll give it a try.

I think I will build the low poly mesh first and then sculpt the high poly version, as I already said in my first post.