Baking out base normals

GavinUnit

I've checked around for this, but surprisingly couldn't find anything. I found all of the usual things about transfer mapping normals from one model to another, but I'm wondering how/if I can save out an image of the base normals on my model, just from using soften/harden normals.
I'd like to use these to tweak a few things on my crazybump normals.
I've dinked around in the transfer maps options but can't find anything... I'm guessing it's going to be stupidly easy.

Thanks

EarthQuake

You want to bake a normal map, from your base lowpoly normals? This would just be a flat 127,127,255 color image.

Bal

Uh, well you could bake out your low poly's world-space normals... not sure what the point would be though. What are you trying to achieve exactly?

GavinUnit

Wooow. I've got a picture of your bot saved on my computer from like 2007 when I first started using Maya. I thought it was the coolest thing. Cool to come across it again on Polycount.

Anyways, I figured it would be a pretty stupid question, but I'm trying to fix a weird normal issue I'm getting on the outer edge of a cylinder, where the UV's have been broken down and stacked.
PS: I know the other UV stuff looks pretty poopy right now, I'm just trying to figure this issue out first. I'm pretty dumb when it comes to normal mapping.

GavinUnit

Oooooooooooh, blah. I bet it's because I have the shells alternating in direction...
how do I get by this now? Or do I just go with a bump map, considering my normal is just coming from CrazyBump anyways.

EarthQuake

A. Yeah it looks like a problem with your uvs, + strange bump map content, try to apply a flat 127,127,255 color image instead of your crazybump normal and see if the problem persists. If so, then its an issue with the mesh normals themselves.

B. A bump map must be converted to a normal map anyway, either by you or by the video card at render time, so it doesn't make a difference.

C. If you're going to use the texture memory to have a normal map, you might as well create a nice high resolution model to bake your normals from.

GavinUnit

Thanks for the comments!
I was thinking it was because of the stacked UV's, but decided it was about time I updated my graphics drivers because I was getting some artifacting when I turned on AO and DOF or Bloom.
Anyways, as far as I can tell the new drivers solved these problems including the weird normals, BUT, now my lighting is all screwed up! I don't even know how to explain it, it's like light is only affecting my model at certain extreme angles or something. Ever seen anything like this?

GavinUnit

Nothin?
I guess I'll try rolling back my driver or something... tho it's a pain to exchange a few glitches for a few other glitches

GavinUnit

Maybe this will make things easier to understand.
I'm going to try bringing my Catalyst down to 11.1 and see if that fixes the problem, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

EarthQuake

You should post your system specs, and problems in the toolbag thread.

GavinUnit

I brought back my driver 1 version and the lighting is woooorking! So is AO and DOF, but bloom is giving me crazy green artifacting. Is there any way I can turn off one side of my ATI 4870x2? I've heard this might be the problem (this could be a completely retarded question, but I don't know how these fancy schpancy x2 cards work, or any cards for that matter...)

Sorry for continuing to reply here, I just figure that it would be helpful if anyone else encounters the same problem in the near future. If it's bumping the thread too much or something feel free to close it.

GavinUnit

Oh, just saw that msg EarthQuake, I'll move over to a Marmo thread.

Thanks!