Use of Normal Maps
There are several places where you can see normal maps being used:
- 3D modelling and texture painting software: 3D modelling software like Blender, Maya, 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, Houdini, and Zbrush and texture painting software such as Adobe Substance Painter extensively use normal maps.
- Game engines: Game engines such as Unity, Unreal Engine, and Godot also use normal maps for creating a detailed view of the characters, background scenery and other 3D assets.
- Shader programming language: Shader programming languages such as OpenGL and Vulkan also use normal maps.
Normal Mapping in Computer Graphics
Computer Graphics has improved a lot in recent years. Nowadays it is much more realistic whether it is animated 3D videos or games. However, rendering such graphics with great detail can be quite hardware-intensive. That’s where normal mapping comes into the picture. It is a technique in computer graphics that uses mathematical computations to create detailed and realistic graphics without using extra polygons. It is a popular method for optimizing the rendering of computer graphics and adding details to it simultaneously. This technique uses something called normal maps which is a 2D image that contains information about the normals of the 3D object. In this article, we will look at what exactly is normal mapping.