Understanding Normals, Normal Maps, Smoothing, Hard Edges and Triangulation

Outgang's full character art classes: outgang.studio
In this video we describe the delicate relationship between normal maps, surface smoothing, geometry and topology, vertex normals and triangulation
Outgang is founded on the belief that education should be affordable, high-quality and given by industry professionals. Laura Gallagher has been teaching character art since 2012 at various venues and has launched Outgang in 2020 with the goal of helping out as many artists as possible aspire to a better life for themselves.
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00:00 Introduction
01:29 Analyzing different cubes
06:30 What's smoothing?
10:55 Vertex normals
17:01 Blending a head and body
22:00 Deep-dive into normal maps
31:03 Normal map issues
40:40 Normal map on the other cubes
49:18 Supporting edgeloops and hard edges
55:52 Putting it all into practice

[@seethe639]

Pinhead is absolutely the best representation of polygon normals. I couldn't help but giggle ^^

[@Alander787]

I agree, what a perfect idea

[@bryanharrison3889]

Pinhead is a good example of how such a simple concept is all too often made overly complex by instructors when teaching people this stuff... They act like its some sort of secret hidden sorcery and often times the students leave training more confused than when they came in. A pinhead explanation is perfect. Its elegant, simple, and virtually any human being can follow along in real time as its explained, whether or not they have 3d experience. This idea is so perfect that the instructor in this video should get an award for it. I've seen some of the most convoluted, complicted, confusing explanations of normals over the years, and I'm glad somebody actually simplified the concept with a real-world example everybody can understand. Stuff like this is why I subscribed to this channel within I think 2 minutes of seeing the first video that came up on my recommended feed.

[@Outgang]

I'll give you both a thumbs up and a heart Bryan. Thanks for the warm encouragements :)

[@jameschan4279]

I've been modeling and texturing professionally for 10 years and I have never seen an explanation of normals as thorough as this. When I first saw the length of the video, I was doubtful that you could talk about this topic for a whole hour, but you did and made ever bit of it feel essential. Bravo!

[@Outgang]

Thanks for the warm words James. Believe it or not I cut out a lot of stuff to hit the 1h mark that I wish I didn't have to. There's more to say, I'll make a follow-up video sometime in the next few weeks.

[@bohdans.6914]

Insane! Exactly what I needed. Thanks a lot for your videos, Outgang!

[@pixbstudios]

Informative and precise as always!. Great video!

[@guillaumetiberghien7565]

OMG Laura. What an interesting subject. That clarified a lot of things for me. Many thanks.

[@GKapasakalis]

The best explanation of normals I have seen so far. Thanks a lot for putting your time into that.

[@irinelradut8460]

Outstanding information! THX Outgang!

[@chunchoe]

wow the blending of head and body was something i wanted to know for a super long time thank you!

[@guillaumedeschamps4566]

Thank you very much for this synthetic and very educational tuto on the subject!

[@OmarHesham]

Amazing explanation! Best out there. And thanks for the average normals tip for the head to body split. Really useful! I used to transfer vertex normals from a continious mesh onto the split head and body meshes using the Maya transfer attributes window. Although that causes issues with blendshapes (vertex normals ignoring new shape). I will have to try the average normals!

[@danielmateidesz4592]

Thank you for sharing this knowledge! I learned a lot!

[@bryanharrison3889]

@ 1:31 as soon as the splash screen dissappeared i instantly saw the differences in the cubes ans spheres and knew what was causing the differences. but i still wacth vids like this because there are usually some gold nuggets i never heard of before and even if i dont learn anything new they are still great refreshers. Me taking this approach to these type of vids is part of why i can spot those differences instantly.

[@anvekarakash]

Hour well spent 💯 nice video

[@Rinboz]

Hi Laura. Just want to say thank you so much for such a thorough explanation! I'm a 2D artist who sometimes does 3D, so my knowledge is beginner-intermediate. I visited this video already understanding normals to see if I can understand it even better. You broke it all down really well!

[@SomsaiArts]

5 years of industry experience here. Never knew it was better to triangulate before baking. This is a game changer for me. Will start incorporating this into my workflow. Thank you so much for these free educational videos.

[@gorkemuzun7451]

This channel is just a pure gold

[@Outgang]

My pleasure Gorkem!

[@ilae2106]

Sorprendente contenido muy claro y entendible👍. Se agradece mucho estos tipos de videos. Gran información, estoy actualizándome con todos los videos que publicas. Nuevamente muchas gracias!.

[@doon4]

this is exactly what i needed!!!

[@guillermogalaadmora9217]

Great class 👌🏽 super comprehensive and useful, as a self taught I struggled with this topic for a long time but after watching this video everything looks super clear. Greetings from Mexico :)

[@png.thomaz]

I simply love your videos, it's helping me a lot! thanks for that.

[@Outgang]

My pleasure Thomaz! Thanks for being a regular to my channel :)

[@tomoyaogawa4485]

Wow, you have made this topic so easy to understand in a very practical fashion. I only had very rough knowledge about it before I watch this video but now I have a better understanding of this. And I was able to point out the things I was doing wrong which was causing lots of problems I couldn't find the answers to. Thank you as always Outgang!

[@Outgang]

You're welcome Tomoya! Glad to be of help. I almost didn't do the video cuz I was like.. Ah.. I'm sure everyone understands this already.

[@silentmoon8127]

OMG where were you like 2 months ago T_T i would have loved to have seen this video earlier haha, but thank you sooo much Laura, i just finished retopo yesterday, and i was like ow man i have to deal with normal maps again, and this showed up in my recommendation today, and i have never clicked on a video as fast as i did thank you for the amazing information as always.

[@EschylesS]

An amazing video, thanks you very much !

[@3dbznessdesignz855]

Laura whenever i am stuck with something you come out with the same topic i am really happy to know you...Laura i better start calling you a legend ....bless you #respect huge huge #respect to you and #peace

[@Outgang]

Haha I am reading your mind Biz! Glad to be of help :)

[@joelsukkau7470]

Thanks you so much for this. really hard to get some good answers on a lot of this.

[@wallarious1605]

Oops! Have already found out!😊 Thank you for the fascinating video!

[@jixal]

Really excellent explanation! Such essential information on how to create a baseline to work from. So easy to confuse things not looking right because the normals are being funky. FYI, if you use Mikk-T tangent space you dont have to split your UV Islands for hard edges anymore. The lowpoly model just needs to be on one smoothing group. Mikk-T is a new(ish) normal tangent calculation derived to try and provide a universal workflow, Unity/UE4/Substance/Marmoset all support it. Also face weighted normals (FWN) is a powerful technique to support all of this stuff you have explained.

[@sergiolatorre8712]

AWESOME VIDEO !!!

[@BracerJack]

You work very hard for your channel, you're very dedicated and you are so brave in all so many ways. Thank you for bringing and presenting who you are to the world. You have shine a light in this world of darkness.

[@Outgang]

Thank you Bracer! That's an awesome compliment to read.

[@lAcedUpLiss]

I'm in my third year of Uni as a 3D artist and this is a very valuable resource for a beginner. This explains normals in a lot more detail than my uni course (tbf they only gave us one semester on 3D modelling). Thanks so much for making detailed tutorials, I'll be checking out your patreon and classes too.

[@Outgang]

Cheers Lady! If you subscribe on the website it's not necessary to subscribe to the Patreon.

[@leticiachirstinavazpedrosa]

Amazing!!!

[@user-bn3jb4lq2f]

great tutorial . thx

[@TheSatzy6699]

Excellent 👌

[@newsonomamashine]

Another great video, in my opinion the best way of baking is the middle cube with the uvs detached in every hard edge, that one provide the best trade off between performance and quality, i use support loops mostly to fix skewing issues and only on meshes with too much details on different parts, since marmoset already have a really good tool to fix skewing, but doing them manually is time consuming so support loops on the baking mesh is a good option and then get rid of them on the final low poly, the drawback is it only works on flat surfaces or the edges of a cylinder. Actually skewing would be a good topic for a video, a lot of artists don´t even know what that is or how to fix it.

[@Outgang]

Thanks for the thoughful writeup and the topic suggestion!

[@Uliszs3d]

your content is really good, thank you very much for the video. :)

[@Outgang]

My pleasure Uliszs! Thanks for letting me know!

[@EnriquePage91]

Very good explanation! I remember the first time I faced the head issue… OMG. It was killing me because I just couldn’t figure out how to make the normals of those two edges be the same (Unity was messing up during import phase) lmao I like to think of normal map pixels as little quads that live “on top off” the actual quads the UVmap maps onto. Then the color as a combination of directions just like the classically colored 3D manipulation gizmos of all 3D suites :).

[@krzysztofwolski9156]

Learned something new! Not surprised though, as this is the case of all of your videos.

[@Outgang]

Thanks Krzysztof!

[@michaelllrobson]

Awesome content! May I suggest a future topic... Optimal uvs for games :)

[@draker7]

Ok, so, I LOVE the fact you didn't wear make up. You look sooooo much better without it! Anyhow, thanks for the awesome tutorial Laura :)

[@brijeshsinha9427]

21:00 , is there a way to do the same process in blender ?

[@Outgang]

There has to be. Perhaps some blender expert here could chime in.

[@dookerbewitt7208]

Couldn't pick a better thumbnail

[@angryteapod1765]

finally somebody explained WHY you need to triangulate before baking

[@ZsoltSulyok]

Amazing Video! May I ask how do u display those colors on the face that previews the shading at selected faces at 38:35?

[@Outgang]

You know what, I'm not actually sure why those look green. I think it may be some post-processing I did to the video since the normal color for selection is yellow. I didn't do anything special other than selecting the faces.

[@xylvnking]

10/10 thank u

[@FlavioDiniz]

28:09 two weeks ago I discovered that by myself xD I got sad after i knew I had to bake again xD lmao

[@artoras9748]

this is just gold , I wouldn't understand this in any other way ..btw Laura isn't Marmoset already triangulate the mesh when u bake or fix the skewing ? thanks a lot

[@Outgang]

Thanks Artoras! The idea of triangulating upon leaving Maya is that you wind up with the same triangulation in Marmoset, Painter, Unreal, ect.

[@wallarious1605]

Hi! Can you please show any way how to blend a head and a body seamlessly in 3ds Max or blender?🙏

[@wojciechwolenski4189]

Hello Laura. I've just finished this video, but still.. i have few questions.. i'm dealing with hard surface modelling(weapons, cars,etc) in my work, so i need to bake map often. And i always wonder how i should do this in proper way.. because completly smooth surface shows reflections issues, hard edges shows this edges artifacts.. so best way to bake is adding support edge loops around corners? even if we need to add a lot of geometry and performance in game engine will be lower? Thanks.

[@Outgang]

Hey Wojciech, without knowing more about your situation I'd still say that almost certainly yes, the best way is to add support edges. As you said they cost more in terms of triangle count so it may be good to ask where the gun will be used. If it's to be used for first-person, it's a hero object so those extra polygons would be well spent. For a "world" version of the gun (that the player would just find laying around the game) I suppose that's less clear. At the distance at which the player would see the gun the hard-edge border artifacts may not really be visible. I'd do a quick in-engine test and see if I can get away with a completely smooth or hard-edged model. Another thing is the target platform. I'm playing Metroid Dread right now and being a switch game, there's plenty of visible hard edges and pixelated surfaces everywhere, it's just what you expect out of an underpowered console. Hope it helps!

[@wojciechwolenski4189]

@@Outgang Thanks for answer! :) it helped a lot.

[@michaelanderson8652]

Rendering pipelines split or 'double up' vertices at a hard edge, and also at a texture seam break. Therefore, when you are adding those bevel support edges to avoid a hard edge, you are actually not affecting performance as much as you might think, even though you are adding vertices to the mesh. This is why you should always do this, and rarely or ever use a hard edge.

[@Outgang]

The cube with the supporting edges winds up with about 52 vertices or so. The cube with the hard edges has 8 vertices. Considering each vertex belongs to three polygons, that's 8x3 = 24 vertices, still less than half the cube with the support edges, so the cube with the support edges is still double the vertex count. Am I missing anything obvious?

[@michaelanderson8652]

@@Outgang Right. It's not 1:1, but the point is that it's not as big of a performance hit as you'd think at first glance (8 vs 52). Also, this is an extreme case (a full cube). I'd be curious about the collar. Either way, this is the 'right' way to do it with modern renderers. I don't think I've used a hard edge in over 10 years except for the sharp edge of a sword.

[@danelokikischdesign]

Why cant I smooth meshes by pressing 3 in Unreal like I do in Maya? haha. Really appreciate this explanation, thank you :D

[@stephenforsyth7883]

Oooh Question: so when avergaing the normals to connect a head mesh to the torso do the normals need to be rebaked for both since the tangent is changing on the edge? If you wanted to swap out heads/torsos and always have it line up would you have to average it once and simply never allow those vertices to be moved?

[@Outgang]

I believe you're exactly right.

[@stephenforsyth7883]

@@Outgang thank you for covering this topic btw it seems like most AAA games have the head split off yet I've never seen anybody cover it online.

[@user-kg9ut8sz4p]

Before watching the video I've a question. I have a 3D model of a car with high poly count and also a low poly count, can I bake a normal map for the whole of the car? Or should I bake a normal map for every single part of it? I'm new to baking so idk what to do. Thanks.

[@Outgang]

It's hard to give you a definite answer without knowing more about what you're trying to achieve because both options have good and bad things about them. If you're new and learning, keeping all the car in one UV sheet sounds to me like the simpler approach.

[@brucelee3343]

Out of curiosity. I usually export in fbx with 'triangulated' checked on in Maya. Is there a disadvantage to doing this vs hitting triangulate? I don't think I've had an issue with this yet where the exported mesh (even after rigging and posing) where the triangulation changed.

[@Outgang]

No as far as I know triangulating through the .fbx exporter works just as well. I'm pretty sure too the triangulation winds up being the same.

[@Gadgetmawombo]

17:00 The blending of the head and body normals. Does anyone know how to do this in Blender? I'm serious, I've looked, there doesn't seem to be a way.

[@MustafaBerkeGureltol]

Beautiful thumbnail

[@deprecatedaccount8027]

20:40 Any insight as to how to perform this recalculation in Blender - specifically 2.93 or above?

[@JeronimusJack]

you could try using the datatransfer modifier or try the normal menu in edit mode (alt+n or so) there you find options to manipulate normals, like copying.

[@nashonightmare]

By little more researching I found a way to do the same thing in Blender. There is a paid addon called MeshMachine you probably know it already. We can duplicate and strip down some face loops around the split then join it. Then smooth the joined model. After that we can use MeshMachine's stashing feature to transfer the smooth seamless normal data from the strip we created to actual separated models. I know this way is way longer than when it comes to Maya. By the way if you found a short and sweet method let me know.

[@arrtma]

what that software again?

[@user-ti7zp4vx6g]

hah preview so appropriate, fun

[@ahsengilani658]

wont triangulating a mesh make it difficult to deform? like on a head or arms?

[@Outgang]

Your meshes already exist as triangles. A quad is two triangles with the diagonal being hidden. Triangulating just makes the diagonals become visible. Triangulating becomes an issue when you intend to subdivide or tesselate a surface.

[@ahsengilani658]

@@Outgang Thank you for the informative lecture.

[@schololo-blog8762]

I don't have any artifacts when I split my UV's in place of hard edges

[@MayankKumar-nc1rq]

Godmode activated for Normals

[@fmtris8064]

Best thumbnail 😹

[@Outgang]

Thanks haha!

[@TheNerd]

THe Cube is Schroedingers Cube. It's Sphere and Cube at the same time. Until you deleted the Cube ;-)

[@juicylemon4291]

Thumbnail photo.....lol

[@sethcurtis6178]

why is your voice not matching, im not sure if it is a sync issue or if you have an accent. its really throwing me off...

[@TheSatzy6699]

Excellent 👌