Rotating normal maps and fixing errors

Jesse Moody · Aug 2012

I am sure I have seen and read about this here in the past but didn't have time to find it.

So I have a normal map that already exists but I need to turn it 90 degrees and have the normals work correctly after being turned.

I thought I saw a plug in or a photoshop script in the past but I wasn't sure and it is super late.

How do you guys usually handle this?

raul · Aug 2012

You can try this!

http://blarg.robertkist.com/?p=11

It isn't 100 percent accurate, but it works most of the times. Don't rotate your selection too many times the channels will start getting disoriented and it will look bad. Meaning, don't call the script into multiple sessions. To rotate the same selection. I use this a bit, so I have it bound to a key like shift r.

Hope it helps!

Noors · Aug 2012

Rotating a normal map by 90° is usually just inverting a channel.

There was another ps action to turn directly by 90°. I'm looking for it.

this i think :
http://www.sinistergfx.com/data/ps/sgfx_normal_map_actions.zip
by sinistergfx

and here some tricks :
http://stephenjameson.com/tutorials/normal-and-parallax-mapping-tips-and-tricks/

Kwramm · Aug 2012

I remember there were some actions for 90 degree rotates (I don't know if it were the sinister gfx one or not) which were not 100% accurate. They copied individual channels around and in some cases the gamma would screw with the medium grey values.

If you have a tool that copies channels, then I wouldn't recommend it. Go via the channel mixer instead (which I'm using in my script). There's no danger of this happening.

moose · Aug 2012

Normal Map Functions PS Actions

few things it does:
- rotate clock wise
- rotate counter clock wise
- flip horizontal
- flip vertical

works on an entire document (layer), or a selection. recommend pulling the selection off of your main layer first (ctrl j).

think it goes channel to channel, not channel to layer, don't have photoshop on my laptop, and cant check atm :O