Hello guys, could somebody please explain to me the difference between surface normals and geometry normals simplified? computational geometry - What's the difference between geometric surface normal and shading surface normal? - Computer Graphics Stack Exchange I don't know how this affect the baking
In the context of that post your normal baker will use the shading surface normal of both meshes. This means that smoothing groups on both the high and low res mesh have an effect on the resulting texture.
^ yep that's the answer you're looking for. Also here's an app to help you visualize the differences between geometric normal and surface normal. https://github.khronos.org/glTF-Sample-Viewer-Release/ Go to Advanced Settings at bottom right, then play with the Debug Channels.
It's a terminology mess still existing in different 2d compositing and content creation apps. What they call "geometric surface normals" Blender calls face normals for example . It's mostly irrelevant for baking. Just show you if some faces are flipped . Honestly I am not sure why they need it in 2d compositing . Never…