john-david-marte
Mar '11

Hi I was hoping to ask one who is experienced in writing normal map baking functions. I wish to teach myself API writing. I wanted to write something simple enough and yet usable.

I want to write a plugin (C++ or Python) on baking normal maps into a texture. 

But first I wish to make sure I understand the process of normal map baking. I was looking at some sources of some other programs that do this. Namely, ATI's normal mapper. Is it right for me to assume that the way a normal map texture is baked is this:

Of course, I leave out the computation of the difference in normals. I think wikipedia or some other site could help me with that. But is this correct? If anyone has any experience in this could he/she confirm my understanding of the process? It would be greatly appreciated!!!

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    Mar '11

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    Mar '11
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joojaa
Mar '11

I would not shoot random rays out*. They use some more subtle heurestic for finding the representing surface point such as closest point in normal direction of the surface, offcourse you still need to supersample each pixel for smooth results but thats a filtering issue. BUt you can use that method if you like.

*that would be occlusion.

PS: implementing this effiently is not exatly easy in terms of maya api usage. Implementing it uneffiently is not usable.