Reply To: Low poly + Normal map = Wierd polys ! 8)
Hey Yannis, it’s really great that you’re taking the lessons and applying them to your own projects!
Normal and displacement maps are special kinds of image textures that influence how light is calculated across a surface. They create an illusion of depth by telling the light to bounce off simulated features of the surface, even though those features are not actually there.
This means that they are great for faking surface details, but can’t change the underlying mesh in any way. The problem with your high poly mesh is that it doesn’t match the silhouette of the low poly mesh, so the bake tries to stamp the high poly shape over top of the low poly shape. In order for the bake to look good, the shapes have to match.
When I place the high poly over the low poly, you’ll notice that it looks pretty close to how your bake turned out:
If you’re looking to dive a bit deeper into how normal maps work, I’d recommend reading this article: https://blog.cgcookie.com/normal-vs-displacement-mapping-why-games-use-normals/
And take these courses when you’re ready:
https://cgcookie.com/course/texturing-game-assets-with-blender
https://cgcookie.com/course/intro-to-normal-map-modeling-for-games