Photographic Normal Map generation

So I did some messing around with a camera flash to generate a normal map based on photos. The results were pretty interesting.

The setup was basically a camera on a heavy tripod and a remote shutter release. Then I had a remote flash which I was able to trigger through IR. Quite a fun setup. I miss my camera, my dad stole it from me because he liked *my* camera so much.  In any case, it gives me a reason to buy the 5DmkII, full frame and HD video. I’ll wait till the firmware includes the 24fps HD video mode.

Back to the photo normals.

Go ahead and download the Normal map, take a look at the Red and Green channels. I found that a single use of flash from the right wasn’t enough to get the detail I wanted for the normal map. Instead I had to take 2 photos for each channel, red and green. For the red I had to take a photo with the flash angled on the left and a photo with the flash angled to the right. Then the two images were overlaid after inverting the colors one of them. The Green channel was similar with the up and down images. Altogether there were 4 images with flash. The blue channel used the flash directly over the object.

The second image is a basic plane with the resulting normal map of my pot holder. Anyway, I think it works, but particular to things that are flat. What helps a lot is having a very bright and very even flash. Maybe this might inspire you to mess with some photographic normals. Cheers!