Blender Secrets - Hard Surface Normal Stamps

To add bolts, small panels and other small details we can use Normal stamps. You can make these yourself by baking normal maps or you can save a lot of time buying them online, they're pretty cheap.

Get the free Blender Secrets sample PDF:

Alphas by Jonathan Ching on Artstation

[BlenderSecrets]

To add bolts, small panels and other small details we can use Normal stamps. You can make these yourself by baking normal maps or you can save a lot of time buying them online, they're pretty cheap.

Get the free Blender Secrets sample PDF:


Alphas by Jonathan Ching on Artstation

[phillsmith]

Brilliant, I've often wondered about how to do these kinds of details, I need to try this whole sequence you've used to build this robot - it's genius.

[lukabrasi]

that's great, but without a diffuse/albedo/image texture to give it color, it just falls flat.. you're better off just making your own stamps with color in Substance so you can use it later too

[KARTHICV]

0:38 inverting green channel in rgb curve gives same result

[scottlee]

I needed this! Thanks!




Now I can actually use those Normal Map packs in Blender!

[pppiu]

was looking for how to make these little details, thanks and congratulations

[ai_zaqraven]

That's is good stuff. Very brilliant actually.

[eddyjuillerat]

Great trick for details. I assume not consuming too much memory or render time.

[g.mcplus]

Thank you for this! Definitely the best explanation I've seen for making your own decals. Second UV is cool but for applying them I've also seen a technique where the decal is mapped to a plane which is shrink-wrapped to the model. The decal's normal affects the underlying albedo as if it were traditionally mapped. Is this possible in blender? I think it's called deferred decals. I've also seen it mentioned as part of the Star Citizen workflow. Apparently it's an easier way to do a lot of decals since you can mirror, array, etc. the planes since they're separate geo.

[Hashimo]

Thanks, that's cool! Is there a way to combine that with a given normal-map like an image or maybe a setup, for example?

[juliaalder]

If you want to sell 3D models on Sketchfab or similar platforms, is it better to create normal maps for the details or to upload the model with the real geometry?

[dotnexdotnex]

what is the website to make that become normal map? i already search at google but its not working anymore

[jonah_a]

What is the song used in the background?

[pile]

Normal stamps could be useful for far background objects.

[senjiryakketsu]

Why you created the second uv channel ?

[meb]

Does the surface/object you intend to add these details to, require a decent subdivision to make the shapes appear correctly?

[NathanSefrin]

Now can you bake all on this onto another uv sheet that has the proper uv set up you want? What I’m trying to say is can you bake from one uv sheet to another on the same model?

[sriharivaila]

Wt if the mesh has to be indented at that area or bulged up from the surface how can we achieve it.
As far as I know normal maps only create the illusion of bump.

[User]

I reccomend a free texturing software there are a lot of those

[everlastingmedia]

So that's one way to do it, or you can use a brush to paint them directly onto your existing normal texture.

If you don't know how to bake perfect normals, you can cheat by painting your diffuse, then importing the diffuse texture into a program like Materialize (free)... create your normal map, then export it.
Import into Blender, set as you normal map in your shader, then paint to it like any other texture.

Set your brush as your desired normal stamp. Create a few normal brushes ahead of time, then go nuts with it.