I just watched a fairly current/up to date ZBCentral video about GoZ and the artist went to his 1st sub-d level to create the Normal map from…I have been under the impression that we were to go to 1 level below our highest sub-d for this map creation.
Can someone please advise?
Thanks! 
normal maps are created at the lowest subD level. Sometime you will want to generate a normal map at a level or 2 below your highest to help grab more details. This is typically used as a bump map though.
You can also generate a normal map at the 2nd to highest when you’re using a displacement map for actual form changes, and then you use the normal map to help pop the details that the displacement map couldn’t handle unless you add tessellation to the extreme.
ahhh…thanks so much for the informative reply, you’ve put my ship back on course.
no problem.