How can I use a noise map to create a normal map?
Normal map from function?
How does it work?
You can use the “NormalFromFunction” material function but that’s a really expensive way of doing this since the noise is calculated three times.
It’s ok for testing but for production you should really look into rewriting/modifying the noise shaders to also calculate the derivatives for ‘cheap’ normals.
I just started to do so the other week but it’s not yet finished,
Hmm, I’m not really capable of re-writing my own shaders… Well, nothing complicated anyway.
I was hoping there would be an equivalent of “normal from heightmap”, or is working that out more complicated that I would hope
I see there is a normal from heightmap function Procedurals | Unreal Engine Documentation
How can I “convert” a noise map into a TextureObject2D? is that possible?
As said in my post above, the node you are looking for is called NormalFromFunction.
I also linked you to a post which shows the exact material setup…