Baking a normal map from depth maps rather than high res mesh

[havoksage]

Hi guys, I know you can generate a normal map from a high resolution mesh to a lower res mesh, which is pretty great (love not having to do that in an external software), however I was wondering why it's not possible to bake it from the Depth Maps of the cameras in much the same way that the usual Bake Textures functionality works, however just for Normals.

The normal maps generated from high resolution mesh lack any kind of image details, whereas the depth maps contain far more intricate detail. Strange that they can't be utilized to bake normals. Especially since the normal maps technically exist (You can right click any aligned image and actually export a normal map of that single image already! would just need this info to be baked onto a mesh) This would skip a step in the pipeline for many game artists.

Just checking incase this feature is already available but hidden away somewhere.

[wojtek]

Hi guys, I know you can generate a normal map from a high resolution mesh to a lower res mesh, which is pretty great (love not having to do that in an external software), however I was wondering why it's not possible to bake it from the Depth Maps of the cameras in much the same way that the usual Bake Textures functionality works, however just for Normals.

The normal maps generated from high resolution mesh lack any kind of image details, whereas the depth maps contain far more intricate detail. Strange that they can't be utilized to bake normals. Especially since the normal maps technically exist (You can right click any aligned image and actually export a normal map of that single image already! would just need this info to be baked onto a mesh) This would skip a step in the pipeline for many game artists.

Just checking incase this feature is already available but hidden away somewhere.

The normalmap export you are referring to is based on the mesh not the depth maps, just fyi.

[havoksage]

ahh yes you're right, oops, i thought things were a bit further along in the depth maps.
 I guess what I'm asking for then is something similar to bitmap2material but for baking mesh normals. B2M already works for this, however it doesn't understand where the seams are so artists have to manually correct them. Other than that image to normal bump works extremely well.

In a perfect world, there'd be a way for metashape to create a simple normal map, then use the albedo to create extra detail in the normals. and Unlike some dumb 2d to normal converter metashape actually knows where the seams are and how blend them. It's already doing this with the albedo already. This would be more efficient that creating a 20 million polygon mesh just to bake down the little details. This is by far the slowest part of my pipeline and a way to cut down that processing time would be insanely valuable.

[cdt59]

I am also interested in a feature like the one described above. Has anyone found a solution?