As follow-up on my question about transparant plastic foil pattern I was wondering:
How can one create a normal map:
- Can this be done inside Blender?
- Can this be done by manipulating a(ny) texture into a normal map?
- Does one need external programs to do so?
Thanks for all hints, tips and tricks.
Sure thing, for the purpose of what you're talking about, you can convert any texture into a normal map by using the bump map node:
You can see what's going on by the colors of the connectors: the bump node takes a greyscale input (if you put in RGB it'll be automatically converted) and outputs a normal value.
Also CrazyBump is free and very useful for getting a decent normal or height map from an image.
@jlampel : Thank You Jonathan, for adding a Cycles node-editor picture to your answer
Q:Do you also know how his can be done with the Blender Internal render engine?
This is something I've used to generate quick normal maps outside of the typical programs used: http://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/ It also outputs different maps like height, AO, and specular.