Normal map baking does not reflect details

Question

I have unwrapped the hi poly model:

And I have unwrapped the lo poly model:

Then I select the hi poly and the lo poly and bake the normal map. However, there are no details in the normal map:

Does anybody see any obvious mistakes I might have made?

Thank you very much for the help!

Here is a close-up of the difference between the hi and lo poly model:

I don't see any major difference from the hi-res to the low res as far as normals. I don't think there is really anything to bake. — J Sargent, Oct 18 '15 at 21:07
@NᴏᴠɪᴄᴇIɴDɪsɢᴜɪsᴇ I have added a close-up to show the difference between hi and lo poly model. Do you still think there is nothing to bake? — tmighty, Oct 18 '15 at 21:46
The Selected To Active checkbox isn't checked in your screenshots. Was it activated while baking ? — Mr Zak, Oct 19 '15 at 15:09
@MrZak Ah, you are my hero! Thank you. That was the problem! — tmighty, Oct 20 '15 at 07:24
I had a similar issue, and found that changing to cycles render worked. — Kaushik Pahuja, Jun 10 '19 at 23:25

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:57

When baking a normal map from highpoly mesh to lowpoly, several conditions have to be taken into account (assuming lowpoly is already unwrapped):

Highpoly must be selected first, lowpoly - last. So lowpoly should be active, i.e. selected last. Also they have to be in the same place in 3D space.
Lowpoly must have image to be baked to. If Blender Internal, It's simply a matter of assigning image in UV/Image Editor while mesh in Edit mode (or by using a material). If Cycles, Image node with this image should be selected in Node Editor.
In Render Bake settings, Selected To Active has to be checked.

This will make Blender to bake the normals from the secondary selection to the primary selection in 3D Viewport.

1 Answers1