The normal map is not the one that you see being rendered in that window. It's being saved on you computer in the directory you've specified at step 6 here: http://www.andrei313.com/ga/render2texture.jpg
Look for it there... it should look "normal mappish"

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Woo Hoo! Finally a normal mapping tutorial that even I could figure out. I haven't read it all yet but many thanks to you andrei313.

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Suddenly... Ninjas! Everywhere! :eek:

yes it does!
Although I have got a card that can't render normal maps realtime, I can render them out in the max render window, right?

Yes you can.

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I finally managed to resolve the problem of the normal map, I just repeated the tutorial.

Hey,

thanks alot for this small tutorial, it helped me loads on my colege project about mapping !

But now, it doesn't work anymore :/

WIth one model when I render the normal map it's just all red
and when the noral map does render out as it should, when applied in a material,
it doesn't work ( I have bump at 100 )

for instance on this simple ring, schamfered the edges and threw on a mesh-smooth;

this is the map :

( yeah, some overlapping going on )

this is the render when applied :

Well, red means that the cage is not as it should. Reset it and Push it until you don't have any more red areas. It needs to be bigger then the highpoly model.
For a lowpoly model that render looks ok, try putting some text on the normal map and move an omni light around to see how it reacts. You can also make some test with different smoothing groups. Generate a normal map with the lowpoly without any smoothing groups and the with... see if there is any difference and which one is better.

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hey,

thanks for the fast answer
I thought the same with the red = cage too small;
but that's not the problem, if I put my cage twice the size of my model,
the normal map still shows up all red :/
Kinda weird

I tried what you said about the ring though,
lost the smoothing groups, result is this :


( bit worse )

think I expected more of normal mapping, that it'd look like this :


so, guess I though Normal Mapping was more magical
I hadn't experimented with rounded shapes yet


it works good for engravings though :

Yes, that might be the best you can do with a normal map on that model. The red might be from the inverted normals.. maybe the faces are flipped. Try a Rest XForm on the lowpoly and why not on the highpoly too

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I think you better go with smoothing groups than normal mapping for this object. The purpose of normal mapping is to fake geometry/structure at a certain scale. Say you have bolts or whatever on your model you can use normal mapping for them.
Normal mapping can't smooth your silhouette.