Sculpting for Normal Maps - Game Character Creation with Blender and Unity - page 128

Baking Normal Maps
Baking textures is one of the most useful skills to have when creating game assets. Baking
takes information you've put into a 3D model, such as texture information, lighting,
sculpting, and many other things, and then renders it to the model's unwrapped UV. This
is useful for a great many tasks, including overcoming the lack of real-time lighting in
some engines, such as the free version of Unity, or creating normal maps.
Today, many engines feature real-time lighting that allows designers to take color
maps and create visually dynamic environments. However, when working on mobile
devices, weaker consoles, or non-premium engines like Unity's free version, baking is
imperative for your workflow (Figure 5.40).

Figure 5.40
Full render bak-
ing can be used to
overcome the lack
of real-time lighting
in some engines like
Unity's free version.

For your zombie, there is a lot of sculpted geometry. Depending on your system, try-
ing to bake the entire model at once may crash Blender. For this, you have to separate the
zombie's body into parts.

Separating Zombie Body Parts
You will use some very basic commands to set up the zombie for baking:
1. Continue with your model or open C05_Zombie_Finished_Sculpting.blend from the
online resources folder for Chapter 5.
2. Go into Edit mode. The zombie will appear to lose its sculpting, but that is only
because you are not in Sculpt mode.
3. Making sure Edge Select Mode is selected; press L to select the head. Press P to sepa-
rate the selection into its own model, as shown in Figure 5.41.