Normal Mapping ??? help please

[zapper1998]

What is the best method for doing Normal Mapping????

I checked this page and a few others

But can't seem to remember the new way...that was discussed not to
long ago...

Any suggestions ????

[RedBull]

Not really much to it, LW9 has a Normal map Node, in terms of configuring it, you just load a normal map and hit render.

There are other nodes which may achieve things like Denis's Nump to Normal, and i think there is a Normal Pass in Sensei's free node pack. If your looking to turn Bump to Normal maps outside of LW, CrazyBump can do a good job.

[Philbert]

Another option is nVidia's Normal Map Filter for Photoshop. It really works wonders, I have a friend at a game studio who uses it all the time. Just create a b/w image (white is concave, black convex) and run the plugin on it. I like the "4 sample" option best.
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photoshop_dds_plugins.html

[RedBull]

Another option is nVidia's Normal Map Filter for Photoshop. It really works wonders, I have a friend at a game studio who uses it all the time. Just create a b/w image (white is concave, black convex) and run the plugin on it. I like the "4 sample" option best.
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photoshop_dds_plugins.html

Just so your aware CrazyBump gives a fair bit better results than Nvidia's plugin, and is faster too..

[Philbert]

Just so your aware CrazyBump gives a fair bit better results than Nvidia's plugin, and is faster too..

That does look pretty cool.

[Sensei]

and i think there is a Normal Pass in Sensei's free node pack.

Mine Normal Pass is for outputing - it reads pixel normal vector (which can be in range -1.0...1.0 in XYZ) and converts to color (0.0...1.0 range in RGB), so it can be saved and used in compositing software.