Online map generator: create bump maps, normal maps, and displacement maps for your 3D model..

All of us who work with 3D know how much work it is to find high-quality textures. When we do find them, we don't always have all the necessary maps to create the correct look in our 3D model.

Bump mapping is a technique for simulating relief on a surface without creating new polygons (faces). It generates shadows and reflections according to the camera's perspective. It can be generated using a grayscale map, where black represents the absence of relief and white represents full relief. The drawback of this type of map is that the closer the camera is to the surface, the more noticeable it becomes that it's fake, that the relief doesn't exist, because bump mapping only simulates height. It can be created in any image manipulation program; simply follow the logic: black represents the absence of relief, white represents its presence, and the intermediate tones represent intensity.

Normal Map is a technical variant for generating relief on a surface without the need to add more polygons; it is more complex than bump map. The maps are in RGB, which stores not only the height of the relief but also the direction relative to the camera, thus being more precise and less noticeable that it is just a relief map, resulting in better quality. Normal map cannot be generated as easily as bump map; it needs to be generated using geometry generation tools. There are plugins in Photoshop and GIMP, but they are somewhat useless because normal map stores directional information, and these programs will guess these directions and simply apply them to the map. One way to create a normal map is to sculpt a mesh with all the details in Blender and then bake it into a simpler mesh. Another alternative is to use CrazyBump, 3D Coat, ZBrush, among others. NOTE: It doesn't necessarily have to be through Blender's Sculpt mode; you only need to create the relief to bake it. It's just that using sculpting tools makes it easy to create details.

Displacement creates the relief directly on the mesh, requiring polygons. It can be generated with the same map as the bump map; it's unnecessary to create a normal map for it, since the relief actually exists, it doesn't need direction information for the camera to calculate. A note: many people might think, "Ah, I'll use a normal map, after all, the quality is better!" Quality is relative to what you're doing; in the case of bump maps, it's much faster to create, while normal maps demand more elaborate work. There's no need to create a normal map for the ground, walls, or even that small detail of the character, but it's essential for creating veins, expression lines, and other details.

There are no rules, just plan ahead. And a small detail: if you put a color image into Blender and activate relief generation, it automatically converts the image to black and white to generate the relief.

This website makes it easy to generate your 3D maps without needing to install anything. Very useful when we're away from our work PC.

Here's the link:

http://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online