How to Bake Perfect Normals in Blender - Tutorial 

Andrew: *gives instruction* Me: *pause the video and proceedes to apply instruction* Andrew: But that's the wrong way! This is the right way *gives another instruction* Me: *ctrl+z ctrl+z ctrl+z ctrl+z...*

Using Blender 2.9 I succeeded the baking after hours of frustration and trial and error with the value Extrusion: 0,05 m, Max Ray distance:0,5 m, Output Margin: 2 px. Now I can finally move on to next chapter. Hope I can save someone else of this frustration with this info :-)

Here is a little update for anyone using Blender version 2.8x (in my case 2.83): 1. If you take a look at UV Mapping of the sculpted (highpoly) anvil model, you will see that most of the mesh that you were sculpting on is missing in the UVs. This causes problems for baking and makes the Normal map completely unusable. 2. To fix this, before doing baking, select first the low poly version of the anvil and then Shift select the new high poly sculpted one! That is the main catch. 3. In the Bake settings, you will see that the Ray Distance is set to 0 m - this needs to be changed to 0.05 or 0.04 (in my case). Also: - "Node mode" is called "Shading" in Blender 2.8x - "Color" in the Normal node is called "Color Space" (you need to set it to Non-Color). Hope this helps :)

5:39 "NODE EDITOR" IS "SHADER EDITOR" FOR LATER VERSIONS

You should have T-Shirts saying "Switch it to Non-Color Data" :D

I figured out how to get this to work in Blender 3.4.1 with only 30 seconds of extra work. No cages or other tutorials needed. Follow these steps: 1) Follow everything Andrew does up to 2:45. The "UV Image Editor" is just called the "UV editor" in the current Blender version, btw. 2) In the popup at 2:49 you _MUST_ check the "32-bit float" box!!!! Fill out everything else in the popup exactly as Andrew does. 3) Continue doing what Andrew does (make sure you select the correct anvils like he says) until you reach 5:34. 4) At 5:34, do *NOT* split the UV editor screen in half! Instead, click into your _SHADING_ tab. 5) In the node section (lower half of your screen) search for the "Image Texture" node and add it in like he does. Select "Normal" in the image texture node's drop-down menu like he does. 6) Making sure the "Image Texture" node is the last thing you've selected, click back to your "Layout" tab and hit "Bake". It should bake correctly now. 7) At 7:50, you have to press the ">" symbol next to the "Select to Active" checkbox to find the ray distance option. It's called "Max Ray Distance" in the current version. 8) At 9:57, you can plug in the image texture into the "normal" slot on your "Principled BSDF" node. You can also just insert the "Normal Map" between them after you do that. 9) At 10:24, the "non-color" option can be found in the "Color Space" drop down menu of your Image Texture node. 10) After doing all this, my anvil was solid purple, so I tried deleting and then re-adding/reconnecting my "MetalCorrodedHeav..." node and that fixed the problem. You may or may not have to, but try doing that if your anvil still looks purple. Make sure it's connected to the "Base Color" nub of the Principled BSDF node. You should be good to go after that. Now I can finally finish this tutorial!

In Blender 2.8 for problem at 7:07, RAY DISTANCE is hidden as a drop-down under "Selected to Active" in the bake menu!

I've spent way too much time messing about since yesterday and only just found the answer I needed deep in the comments. If you use Blender 2.9 and follow Andrew's exact method, your normal map will look like total garbage. To fix this, add some extrusion when you bake your normal map, it's the setting just over the max ray distance setting. I don't know the optimal ammount of extrusion you should add, but I've tried 0.1 and 0.02 and both seemed to give the same (good) result. I kinda wish this tutorial would be remade for the current version, I wasted a lot of time on this

Yeah man, you definitely need to update this video. Not only update it, but spend more time dealing with what is required to make a quality bake. This took way too much time for myself and apparently many other viewers. All of your other content is amazing, but this anvil tutorial is way too out of date to keep suggesting it as the next step after the donut tutorial.

Video: lasts 13min. Me: Spent 5 hours to do it. Tnx for the tutorial!

Andrew: It will take you about 30 seconds My PC: this little maneuver is gonna cost us 51 years

@3:53 No need to control-C and Control-V Just click and drag from the first to the second value. There you go, little trick :)

Dammit, this is where it all breaks down for me. Nothing is as Andrew describes it...

In Blender 2.8 the Bake drop-down is located in Render, then change the Render Engine to Cycles. Once that's done scroll down and you should see Bake.

I almost bailed, but was able to follow with help from the comments and googling. It would be great if this video could be annotated to have a little note pop up whenever something is done a little differently. Because it's a great tutorial, just needs a little updating so people can follow in newer versions.

Blender Guru: "You wanna make sure that both the high poly and low poly mesh are sharing the same position" Me: " O_O " Me: *Goes back to the previous video* Blender Guru: "Before we do any detail, make a copy of your current mesh and put it on a new layer" Me: "GG..." *closes Blender*

You have the one of the best free blender videos out there man.. thanks..

[ Blender version 3.0 ] Maybe will help somebody, who tried everything but still has green/orange colors on NM. I'm also a beginner, and I found this solution works for me: 1. On your low-poly model try to slightly move some loopcuts, especially in the places where you have those glitches. Check them in the UV Editing tab. But don't touch seams. 2. Use shrinkwrap modifier on lo-poly (and the target will be hi-poly), with small amount of the offset (0.002m for me). 3. In render section temporarily change max samples to about 100, and turn off denoiser. 4. In Bake section leave Extrusion at 0, and play just with Max Ray Distance. For me the best value of MRD was 0.0005m 5. Also here in Bake - Output I put 1 px for Margin. Maybe I am wrong, but it seems to be more small details on NM with this value. 6. So play with Ray Distance, and when you-re satisfied, turn Max Samples back to 4096 and Bake It!

the reason i like love this man and his tutorials is : he always has that face, i learned something new and im gonna share it with you guys. keep it up andrew

Other things to know about normal maps. 1 / you can bake multiple objets on a low poly mesh (selected to active) 2 / all objects must be in the same shading, all "smooth" or all "flat".

For those who have maintained realistic proportions of the anvil stretching no more than a meter. Reduce the max ray extrusion in micrometers to avoid some surfaces which are cm's away from each other like the circular hole. For me, it worked at 0.000005 m or 5 μm.

Funny how we learned modelling with a donut and baking with an anvil...

For 3.2.x+ -You should not have to change max ray distance but only extrusion & margin possibly - To find the correct extrusion number, you can easily measure what is the biggest bump on your high poly model compare to the low poly model (Layout space - side view - Measure ). -Once you have this, input it in the extrusion (in the Bake properties). For me, it was 14mm. Set the margin at 2px, and select the High poly first then low poly. - If you get some solid colour in your normal map, then adjust accordingly the extrusion to be higher or lower by small increment until you erase all solid colours (generally, higher will be the answer). The bigger the solid colour areas, the bigger the increase is likely to be. For instance, if you tried 14mm and get large colour area, go for 20mm. If very small area, try a sensible 16mm ... etc This workflow worked for me, hopefully it is helpful.

10:30, non colour data now (2.8) found in the colour space drop down.

Make a 2.8 complete tutorial like this one please. not only the interface changed but also what happens in different actions.

Honestly, I've followed your doughnut and chair tutorial with little to no problem, but this is the one part that has me absolutely stumped. I've worked with baking in Maya, 3D Coat, and Substance Painter, and I am still trying bake this one object in Blender. I genuinely feel like a video just going more in depth with baking in Blender would be really helpful to a lot of viewers. I had to watch and troubleshoot so much stuff just to get working what would normally be simple in other programs, and I still am not completely happy with the results. Considering how important normal maps are in game dev, and the fact that a lot of users that use Blender typically don't have access to paid programs like Coat or Painter to generate normal maps easier, I feel like it'll be genuinely beneficial to your community to go in-depth with baking with the newer versions. Otherwise, good tutorials! I'm enjoying my slow migration from Maya to Blender : ) Cheers from Melbourne mate

6:39 UV Unwrap High Res Mesh Before attempting BAKE!

For everyone who uses a newer version 2.8 (and higher) of Blender. Check out this tutorial instead: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DQPjIGncXcM.html I hope I could help. Make sure, that nothing is overlapping.(In the UV Editing Tab) If you want to change something in the Normal Map, go to "Texture Paint" and draw with a white Brush. (Blender don't understand the Information of a white Color in a Normal Map. Therefore it does not affect to the texture of the mesh either.)

Congrats on the big news bro ! Hope your girl will teach us Blender v8.5 tutorials once she starts tutoring for Blender Guru. Btw for anyone asking about how Andrew learned to use Blender this well on his own - he has a time machine, so he went to the future, watched his own tutorials and then came back with that knowledge. There's no other explanation.

If you use 2.9 and changing the ray distance doesn't fix the normal map, change the extrusion to 0.04 (or something around that) and the max ray distance to 0 and it should work.

There should be a simple script that automates the "make a new 4k texture, make a new material, apply it all to the active object" dance that you just did. Similar to the script which does the "import image as plane" workflow. It's little everyday but tedious tasks like this which give serious Blender adoption such a bad time.

5:41 - Blender 2.8 - Node editor became Shade editor

For blender 3.0 users. Ray distance is now called extrusion and Max ray distance is best kept to unlimited. hope this saves a headache.

I ve got a problem, well i baked everything directly way that Andrew did, but when i came to render, all scrathes, sculped details were in weird spots, for example, a line that should be on the top edge, was on the base of Anvil, could you help me ?

You are really a Blender Guru =)

I got stuck on bake tutorial. Hah. The rest was fine.

*This* portion of the tutorial is fairly outdated now that 2.9x is out. It is pretty significantly different. I managed to get through it with some extra time and reading comments below. For the bake, playing with the extrusion settings and max ray distance (all below 0.5) and the output margin pixels helped get a cleaner bake.

How do I do this its not working AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I clicked bake instantly and it baked it perfectly first time without setting up anything, I won't question it

For those struggling with creating a normal map following this method using 2.9x, here is a better way to do it in the new version of Blender: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DQPjIGncXcM.html&ab_channel=Jayanam

This tutorial is a total nightmare in 3.0. Please remake this one!

Ok... Blender 2.93 here - If you keep getting mustard colour even though you read all comments and already changed the Margin, Extrusion and Max Ray Distance settings... this is how I fixed it. Select one of the objects, hit tab to go into edit mode and press Shift + N to recalculate the normals. Do it for both anvils and bake again!

Great tutorial! A few corrections, though. "Normal maps cost nothing in performance" is not true. Especially if you use a lot of 4k textures (like the one you baked). Those textures have to be stored in memory, too. You probably can't use your normal map in DirectX-Based engines (Unreal) properly without a little tweak (because Blender is OpenGL-Based). When they look weird in engine, try flipping the green channel (Y-Channel) either directly when baking, in Photoshop or in engine.

Hi guru, why I can't bake normal properly, I did my best for rest ( modeling, Sculpting, Texturing ) but I can not bake normal, it doesn't work correctly, its similar to what I done in sculpting but there are flaws in the edges

Quick Tip! If you're wondering why you can see creases and lines on your normal map after baking, it's because your subdivision mod render is low. Upping the levels viewport doesnt do poo (obvs, I know that now). Up those numbers and it will be smooooothed out. Time saved: 3 hours. You're welcome.

Update for Blender 2.91 users: Use "Extrusion" instead of Max Ray Distance - for me, a 0.06 m worked well while keeping Max Ray Distance at 0 m. After an hour or so of farting around and trying the cage method, I finally tried Extrusion for the first time and it actually worked, to my surprise. The other thing: making sure your models are in the same collection... this sorta changes the order in which the objects are selected (shift clicking rather than ctrl clicking to select them) and I have no idea why this is a thing, but that seemed to make a difference for me. It's completely anecdotal, so I have no idea if it was truly a contributing factor or not. I'm a beginner, so just sharing anyways, hope this helps!

For blender 2.93: If anyone else has the problem that the normal stays black even though you baked, make sure to go to "image" and then click "reload" or just press alt + r in the image editor.

I can't get the normal map properly! :( I think I have done everything correctly, but unfortunately the difference between the versions is clear enough, I also try to follow some of your advice but nothing, I haven't found the error yet... it could be an object connection error, like when at the beginning it move the low poly anvil to the level of the other high poly??? i really don't know what to do

Please do a "Customizing the Interface" video for the new people, sometime! The high customizability and freedom of workflow is one of the things that really makes Blender stand out from other software, and I feel like you don't quite talk about it enough.

For Blender 3.0 and above users!! I kept getting a mustard artifact for my whole normal map regardless of the Extrusion, Ray Distance, and Margin values. My fix: In the Overlays options along the top menu bar, turn on Face Orientation. If you see any red, it means your normals are facing the wrong direction. Select the mesh, tab to edit mode, select all vertices (a), alt + N for Normal options, then Recalculate Outside. This should turn everything blue, and you should be good to go! From here, my settings were: Extrusion: 0.03 m Ray Distance: 0 Margin: 16 px Hope this helps :)

For Blender 3.2: Select the LOW POLY anvil FIRST, then shift select the HIGH POLY anvil. In my case, setting the Extrusion to around 0.12m worked (I left the max ray distance to 0). Hope this helps!

Hello, in sculpting the high poly, I have made extrusions that are bulging out, When I bake it to low poly, it does not appear. Instead it is flat. Does anybody know how to fix this?

Anybody else getting little lines on the horn because of the normal map?

Does anybody know why I might be getting untextured flat spots all across my otherwise textured normal map? I feel like I've tried everything at this point. I'm stuck.

OUTDATED! ⚠@BlenderGuruOfficial Please update to Blender >3.2. - Thx for Donut & Chair Tutorials! 👍 For those who are struggling, i recommend these two baking-vids: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DQPjIGncXcM.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tndUB5b4STI.html My Baking-Specs: Extrusion: 0,03 m (0,05 m also works), Max Ray distance: 0 m (some have 0,5 m), Output Margin: 2 px Don't forget to save the Normal as Picture on your PC, or you have to do your baking again. After restarting the PC and Blender, i had to re-open the normal into the shader-node, even tho it already was connected. Don't know why. Some comment was telling to apply it, but i don't know how atm. Good luck 😛

Using Blender 3.3 here. My normal map had many problems so i searched on YT and on the Blender Manual and i found the cage option. I used a tutorial by Grant Abbitt and it worked perfectly for me, this is the link ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nJ0PM7m9TJc.html

For anyone who is using blender 4.0, this tutorial here on normals in blender 4.0 helped me out :) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nPMYX22bfck.html

Im gonna be honest I stay away from 5 year old tutorials ^^ first time really stuck here

I think it's time for me to move on to a tutorial that is more up to date. Trying to bake lost me in every direction.

For newer blender versions (Blender 3.3.1 +) Use CAGE while baking (see for tutors on youtube)

On my final render I'm still able to see the creases or lines of the mesh. It looks similar to how the horn did pre-smoothing, but over the entire anvil.

I don't know if this was mentioned but a Subdivision Surface modifier can mess up baking a normal map. It's easy to forget the modifier was added to your object if you set the Viewport setting to 0. The baking process uses the Render setting from the modifier when baking. Hopefully, that info will be useful to someone and save them the confusion I was going through. :-)

In 2.93 -- at 2:40 -- Split the window by going to the same corner of the panel as Andrew and you should see the curser turn into a cross-hair, hold and drag left and you will automatically create a new window. Switch it to Image Editor by clicking on the button in the top left corner of the new panel (icon changes depending on mode) and it should drop down display many types of editor modes--- choose Image Editor. Then you will see what Andrew sees and at the top center (not bottom like him) you will see the add Image option. Close windows (I had to look this up) by taking the window you DO want to keep, and click-hold dragging it OVER the adjacent windows you want to close (you should see an arrow pop up) and it will automatically close those windows covered by arrows. Bake option will only show up if you have Cycles as your Render Engine (if you have it on Eevee you won't see it) Baking normal -- (from other comments) -- Make sure your low-poly anvil and sculpted are in the same collection. Extrusion .06 Max Ray 0 Margin 2px In the Normal Node, you can't change the Color Space drop-down until you (within the same node) change what file the node is pointing at -- switch from the Normal that we started with to the new Normal map we saved "Normal.001" or whatever you saved it as (although mine didn't show the full file name).

it will take you about 30seconds.. me and my 9mil tris mesh : ah yes 30 secs indeed

For some reason the normal map I bake highlights the edges of the low poly model. Anyone's got an idea why this happens?

what worked for me in blender 3.3 was set extrusion to 0.05m and max ray distance to 0

I'm on 2.9...this makes no sense to me. Im totally lost. I got everything set up to start the baking...really hard to find all the right buttons. I can load the bake now but its just blue.

Normal looks fine in Lookdev but is glitchy in Render. Any ideas?

No amount of smoothing in the sculpt phase prevents my mesh from having those distinct lines in the horn for the final baked normal map. Any idea what that's happening?

Does anyone else end up getting hard block-like lines on one side of the normal but not the other?

Imma bake a bong, 3D print it and get baked.

I do everything as you show, but nothing comes out. The light layer does not bake.

Make sure that you've applied your scale transforms before baking. Took me 2 hours to realize that's why my normal map appeared flat in some parts.

I started this on 2.93 and finished on 3.0. I stuck here for 2 weeks. So many errors but probably I really learnt it now. First of all check the size of your anvil. I didn't realized that my was huge. The mentioned numbers will work on a large realistic size anvil. I also made a mistake that after so many trial I have forgot to select the low poly image texture node. My other mistake was that while I was selected the high poly than the low poly I used Shift for selecting the low poly not the Ctrl. The low poly needs to be lighter that will shows that it is the active. It would be great Andrew if you could recreate this tutorial. It is so hard to follow now. I think I have also find a bug in 3.0 When finally I made a good map I could see the sculpted surface on the low poly in the material viewport but not in the rendered viewport. Next day when I opened the saved file again it was good in both viewports. This wasn't easy...

If you're having problems baking. Ignore the Ray Distance, at most of the time you can set it to zero. Just change the extrusion. In my case, I change the extrusion to 0.034m and worked very well.

Guys, if you're bake looks funny, check your uv map. If your map is still on drugs, then select the low poly one first then the high poly

2.93 user here. For those having problems with the high poly model having no UV map, it doesn't need one and no material either. In my case, I had to select the low poly one first (which you're going to bake the normals to) and then the high poly one (the one which you've sculpted) and then press bake. My bake settings were Extrusion set to 0.01m and Max Ray Distance set to 0.06m, yours may differ slightly. Make sure to have a texture node in the materials of the low poly model so the normal map can be assigned there. If you have problems, I may be able to help.

Hello! I want to share my resolution of baking map problem. Long story short... i am using blender 2.92 and i faced two problems. My model was sharp and baked map was like cut off within the low poly model (there where flat faces along the model). Here my resolution: 1. Use shade smooth on the low poly model. I know that it was obvious but still i stuck here at some point) 2. In the blender 2.92 there is option Extrusion. Use it instead of Max Ray Distance( i mean left MRD in 0 m). And try to play only with this value. I hop it will save some hours for someone)) And Andrew thanks for your videos they are awesome) Please make more tutorials. I'd like to create some weapon but for example XD

When I save normal map I also check 'Save as Render' checkbox, because it converts final image to correct RGB values for render (neutral value has to be #8080FF). It saves you from lots of aggravation if you import maps to a game engine and you have highly visible seams where different islands of your normal map meet together.

in blender 3.2, I was able to select high poly first, then low poly, then bake with extrusion .05, max ray distance .1, margin size 2px. initially my max ray distance was too low and not reaching the deeper indents I had sculpted. if you are not seeing the deepest part of your cuts, try increasing the max ray distance

“It will take you about thirty seconds” you overestimate my trash computer

great thanks, now normal maps are going to be like amogus to me. I'll see it everywhere

In Blender 3.2 my normal map was still not looking good even after playing with the Extrusion and Max Ray Distance alot. I finally ended up fixing the issue by checking "32 Bit Float" when creating the 4k texture. Hope it helps someone else!

Is it just be, or does my normal map look fine? There's a ton of comments that say it was too hard and wasn't working properly, but I just did exactly what Andrew said and it turned out fine. I'm using Blender version 2.93.3.

I've watched this before, but I needed to refresh my knowledge on how to do this. Thanks!

God!!! I can't believe Andrew is trying to make a living by pushing his poliigon platform! I expect him to make his money solely off of RU-vid AdSense, an unpredictable and not always guaranteed way of making money.

Can you explain CAGE baking ?

Not sure what I did wrong because I followed his steps to a tee but applying the baked image in shading node did not give anything close to what I sculpted in the high-poly anvil. Is it because I used the smart UV project instead of UV unwrapping manually? By the way I'm on version 2.9

for some reason, no matter how low i set my ray distance, those strange colors keep appearing. any fix pls?

I love you so much! I didn't sleep all night and day just to complete this! Not joking! Your videos are the best!

i love the way you explain Blender Guru tnks for

so for the baking, you shouldn't use an image texture... yeah it does not work. also if you're using the newer versions and it doesn't work use these settings. max ray distance: 0.5 output margin: 2px extrusion: 0.5 for those who saw the original comment by Jesper Kofod the reason why I reposted it is because youtube likes to push old comments down and promote newer ones. so in case that comment suddenly gets lost in the other 1.3k comments this one should help.

my high poly mesh rendered more quickly than my low poly one (7.6s~ vs 8.3s~), and my low poly one had weird banding along the horn of the anvil even though that wasnt in the high poly one. anybody know why this is? thanks

No other fucking guy explained why do we bake high-poly onto low poly. Thanks again to Andrew. U should not be blender guru, instead 3d guru as no one explains theories, they just tell u how to do something

What is the difference between a Normal Map and a Bump Map then? I've always used Bump Maps so far.

How can I do this in the Blender 2.8 series? I can't find the Bake button when I use Eevee render. The easy GUI and the Eevee Render are the 2 reasons i Must use Blender 2.8 instead of Blender 2.7.

Took me 4 tries to realize that i forgot to turn smooth shading on smh. Also his mesh is way better than how mine turned out :D

stuck at baking normals part- using 2.90 version. literally a pain in the ass.

This tutorial became so old... I made hundreds of mistakes and wasnt being able to end this without problems. My normal map is bad, lots of blocks appeared on the flat surface of the anvil and all the pictured look awfull. Its just tilted me out as hell.

7:00 : Anyways, it will take you about 30 seconds my computer: are you trying to question my slowness