So i made a texture in Gimp and i need to make a normal map for the material. I do not have photoshop and for various reasons i cannot install new software on my work computer(for example, the normal map plugin for gimp). Is there any way i can make a normal map for the texture in Unreal?
normal maps should be made from 3D geometry, in a 3D program like zbrush, blender, 3ds max, maya, or Xnormal.
without installing any software or plugins, you don’t have alot of options.
if you can make 4 different versions of the texture, lit from each cardinal direction, you can use this method:
http://www.zarria.net/nrmphoto/nrmphoto.html
if you don’t want to paint 4 different versions with accurate lighting, you could try playing with distorts>emboss or Map>bump map, but if you are making a normal map from an image, your results will look terrible, so you might be better off just painting the lighting into the diffuse or convincing your boss to let you download blender and xnormal so you can bake from geometry properly.
Taken from another reply regarding PBR material making ( https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/278192/questions-about-fbr-texture.html )
You could also try this online tool for making your normal map
Google free theres LOTS to choose from. You want something youcan draw with like Quixel
I highly suggest investing in quixel suite monthly subscription and photoshop will soon be subscription based.
You can also bake normal maps from hipoly to lo-poly meshes in blender and save the file. = free
Hope this helps
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