Character Design and Creation - Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish - page 66

Figure 5.18 The default unwrap for the head

Now, the two models must be placed at the same point in space, which can either be accomplished through
using the Snap tools or selecting both objects and using Ctrl-
C . Then, on the Bake panel of the Render Buttons, both the
Selected to Active and the Normals buttons are enabled and
the normal space is set to Tangent , as in Figure 5.19.

The baking process moves from selected object to active object , so
be sure to select the high-resolution mesh fi rst, followed by
the low-resolution one. With both selected, and making certain
that the low-resolution mode mesh was selected last, making it
the active object, press the Bake button. Blender will chug for
a little bit because it is rendering an image that represents the
difference between the normals of the high and low resolution
objects. When it is fi nished, check the UV/Image Editor win-
dow to see the result (Figure 5.20).

Figure 5.19 Ready for Normal baking

At this point, you should save the normal map to a fi le so
you don't lose it. It can then be used on the low-resolution
model by setting your materials appropriately. The cru-
cial settings are the Normal Map and Tangent settings
in the Texture buttons, and using UV texture coordinates
and the Nor button in the Material settings, as shown in
Figure 5.21. Make sure to use the Image texture type and
to Load the saved normal map image into the texture.
Now a render shows the scar appearing on the low-res-
olution head, but without the almost 400,000 polygons
of the sculpted model. A side-by-side comparison shows
very little visual difference between the two rendered

Figure 5.20 A simple normal map