Normals in Movie Production
I need a hint on what could be a good guideline when to use normals for movie production.
See on my example mesh i've done, i did all the paneling with actual geo. Most smaller details i would like to add, would somewhat break the mesh and going one mesh-density higher would be quite overkill as well, as this piece probably be a mid-tier detailpiece.
So i would do additional details with decals, but if i do so, i could be extra lazy next time and do lot of the paneling stuff with normals as well..., or why shouldn't i?
Of course i'm not working in the film industry, but i'm super curious as of if there are some general guidelines to follow. I know that movies use displacement maps, but i feel like for some hard surface stuff this would probably be a bit overkill.
Replies
Everything is modeled or displacement in VFX. If its seen closeup its modeled in.
normalmaps are used in movies as well. not like in games with a synced workflow, more like interchangable with bumpmaps, for finer details
A good guideline is to imagine the object you're modeling painted white. That's what a film resolution hipoly should look like.