Texture Sheets and Baking Normal Maps

1magus

So I just discovered the basics of baking in a High polygon mesh into a low one. But than I realized when using texture sheets where you share textures this method cannot work, unless you were to use multiple material IDs in game.

My current method for a scene are to use one giant texture sheet that contains maybe 8 or so textures that are 512x512 in size. These could include a wood texture, stucco, metal etc... The point is I reuse them for props and buildings and its much cleaner and saves on texture space and draw calls. But if I were to bake a normal map onto a specific object it would look great. However any other prop or building that uses diffuse textures that the prop was using will get that part of the normal map.

Is there any way around this? Or should only special props get a baked in normal and those use a specific diffuse/ specular/ normal map?

I'm assuming that not every object in a video game gets a normal map baked onto it right?

McGreed

You can still create a shared texture, but have different materials, if thats the issue. Just have one material with texture, but not the normal, and another with both.

1magus

So would you say the "Shared Texture" has no normal map and just a specular?

While a specific normal map would be separate materials? So for each object that has a baked in normal you would have more than one draw call right?

EarthQuake

For tiling textures you often just model out a small section of it as highpoly and then bake it down to your texture space.

There isn't really any reason you "cant use normal maps" for certain types of textures, any situation where diffuse/spec works normal maps should work fine too as well.

You will model your lowpoly a bit differently to work tiling textures of course, in the same way you would with just a flat diffuse.