Normal map generation question

Vysuki

I've played around alot with creating complex objects in Max and basic texturing and want to move up into using mudbox for sculpting.

Having never used normal maps, I'm curious as to how they're created and the limitations of creating them which leads me to ask this:

I am wanting to create a modular victorian road with a normal mapped texture to help make the bricks 'pop out'.

If I have created a simple low poly frame and then add actual bricks as a seperate object that insersects the base road, can I use the 2 objects to create a bump map for the original road? (I am really sucking at explaining this so I knocked it up quick and heres a screen shot showing what I'm trying to do, hopefully this explains it better)

http://i.imgur.com/WnLDK.jpg

If this doesn't work or if anyone knows a better way to achieve it I'm more than interested to hear it or follow any links you guys might know of.

Joshua Stubbles

Umm, search.

And yes, you could bake that out. There would be nothing on the sidewalk since you have no hipoly mesh there. But it would definitely bake out for the main road.

Since the sides of the sidewalk are vertical though, you're going to get some wonkiness there, depending on how your UVs look.

Vysuki

Cheers, yeah I had a look through some of the searches but I couldn't see if multiple objects would bake onto a single map to use. Most of what I've seen on here has been from people sculpting on what appeared to be a single mesh for the map. Sorry if I was alittle blind

Joshua Stubbles

Yeah you can totally use multiple meshes, even nustled into each other. Just so long as the lowpoly is built in a fashion to capture that data, you're good to go.