Do normal maps have the same effect in Roblox?

As many who have used blender will know, you can add detail to low poly models by baking detail from another high poly one to the low poly one.

In game engines such as UE4, Unity etc… This improves the looks of models and cost no extra performance.

My question is is it the same in Roblox? Or when imported does it have a bad effect on performance?

2 Likes

It’s quite the same, I do suggest baking textures onto models as it’s very resourceful and comes in handy

3 Likes

Of you use very high poly models with small details I recommend you bake them

2 Likes

You can use SurfaceAppearance objects to apply PBR material to an object, which is quite similar to UE4 and Unity. IMO, it’s not perfect yet. Unreal and Unity’s PBR looks much better. Roblox’s seems to lack a bit of depth still. But it’s better by far than not using it!

That will allow you to apply normal, metalness, and roughness maps alongside your albedo/color texture image. Your title mentions normals, but the body of your thread mentions just baking the detail into the image. Either works, but I would prefer to use SurfaceAppearances for the extra detail & let Roblox’s auto-adjusted performance settings do the rest.

3 Likes

When you bake detail onto an image it produces a normal map, that’s what I meant.

Also thanks a lot for the reply it’s very helpful!