Anatomy of a Normal Map : What’s Inside and What It Means

Join the Discord server : Throw a buck in the tip jar : Enhanced MOP Boolean Assembly : This is NOT a baking tutorial. This is a deep dive into what a normal map IS, what it’s good for, what it’s NOT good for, and what the internals look like. I always find it valuable to have some idea what’s going on under the hood with my daily work. It helps you debug problems and helps you get things done in a more efficient way because you know WHAT you’re generating and, more importantly, WHY. Let’s talk about vertex normals, normal map textures, color channels, math, and flipping the green channel! So come along - let’s rip open a normal map and talk about what’s in there... --- Hi! I’m Warren Marshall! I’m a freelance, hard surface 3D artist living in North Carolina. I specialize in hard surface work but I can do pretty much anything from environments to props. I worked at Epic Games for over 15 years and started freelancing after that. Since then I’ve done prop and environment work for some fun projects, including We Happy Few from Compulsion Games and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. I’ve also done a bunch of asset packs for the various marketplaces. I have experience with Unreal Engine 4 and Unity and know how to put assets together quickly that look good in those engines. Here’s a link to my Art Station page where you can see a bunch of my latest work: Visit my main web site here : You can email me directly if you’d like : warren@ Questions, business inquiries, support - or just to say hi! --- Motion Graphics : Skye Nelson, aka “SkyeShark“ ( )