Simple scene

notareal

Obvious way is to create normal map from a high poly model with blender or some other suitable tool, but that's not the only way. Other ways are with photography or 3d scanning.
Also there are programs that can calculate 3d space based on few photos and then generate normal map.
http://zarria.net/nrmphoto/nrmphoto.html

majid

thanks Notareal , verry informative

harnstein

@notareal said:

Obvious way is to create normal map from a high poly model with blender or some other suitable tool, but that's not the only way. Other ways are with photography or 3d scanning.
Also there are programs that can calculate 3d space based on few photos and then generate normal map.
http://zarria.net/nrmphoto/nrmphoto.html

Thanks for that information- i never cared much for normal maps (as far as searching for textures on the web and creating bump maps for them worked quite well)..

OT: now i ran into difficulties wanting to have a stacked stone wall with several stones coming out. So i 'm giving it a try to make displacement maps for that.. :OT

Its possible building up some high-poly model (which would take ages to render eg. rocks) light them from 4 sides and export the result. Add them in PS and generate a normal map. Use diffuse lit rendering of the high-poly model as texture on flat surface and add the generated normal map.

Maybe not the same high quality result but timesaving. Correct?

notareal

If you have high poly model you simply can bake a normal map from it with blender or some other program and use that normal map for a low poly model. No need for lighting tricks.

michaliszissiou

@unknownuser said:

If you have high poly model you simply can bake a normal map from it with blender or some other program and use that normal map for a low poly model. No need for lighting tricks.

UVs first of course. Try to have less seams-islands as possible though, they tend to be visible on normal maps.
To light and bake textures is a great dirty trick though, useful for less capable rendering engines than Thea. In this case prefer AO lighting only, no other lights.
I posted here some rocks baked this way, sometime ago. http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=31246&start=15
You can download the low poly rock and play with it. I also posted low def versions of bumps and normal maps, try to play with them. A 2048x2048 texture map works much better though.

Bryan K

Wow. I really like the last image.

majid

thanx mates , for sharing. here is another gray scale using Thea CRF option.

michaliszissiou

Wow nice one majid.

Bryan K

Wow.

Tri-X Pan.

harnstein

Thanks michaliszissiou and noareal- good information, i was wondering what people meant when they talked about baked..

Majid, great renders!