Is there a way, to generate a sculpt, with detail from an existing textured normal map?
If I had a low res obj (already uv unwrapped), and subD it … then importing my normal map texture …
like a reversal of creating a displacement map, but using the normal map.
Don’t know if I am explaining myself properly.
Nope. Normal maps don’t hold on to depth information. They don’t understand how deep one object is to another, only that there is a left/right up/down change, not forward and back. The forward and back is actually what you need. So basically, you can’t reverse engineer a sculpt from a lowpoly and normal map.
You’ll need a height/displacement map as normal maps don’t contain any depth information; they only tell the vertex/texel which direction it should be facing. It might be possible to find a program like crazybump that could attempt to guess into existence a a brand new heightmap by using a normal map, but even then the results will likely only be suitable small surface details on 2d planes.
Thanks for the replies.
It was just an idea, considering the amazing minds out there had been able to create all this tech.