Hey everyone. So I mean is there any way to do this kind of normal map in my example in just one go, one bake, one click? Maybe some magical "translucency" shader tricks? Or some plugins/scripts for max, blender or maya that will automatize the process?
Project UV from the plane to those small objects . Bake object /world space normal map. Apply it on the plane only and re-bake it to tangent space . Not a single click although .
Also you could just double the plane, select the original, shift it a bit and use the rest as hi poly object plus another copy of original plane as a cage object above the small ones.
Or bake otho camera looking down to plane with normal AOV . 3d soft tends to do it in -1 to 1 range . For tangent space like looking map you could do *0,5 then +0,5 on pixels ( you need to save as exr) to make it into 0-1 range in Blender compositing pane or Photoshop and perhaps swap some channels if your normal AOV is not in camera space. It's usually green and blue for renderers with Y up.
Decade ago I had a special material in Max where 0-1 gradients in XYZ being set in camera space mixed together into Standard material self illumination slot and I did a quick ortho render with a light source off . Now I think 3d max can do just camera space AOV for that.
Replies