Not sure if this belongs in rendering or content creation but I like you guys more. I started making some material that use tessellations that actually add geometry. The problem is that it is expensive relative to a mesh+material. My question is if there is a way to generate a static mesh from a normal map in (preferably) Maya LT. I figured this would work good with things like leaves or rocks on the ground. Anyway, please let me know if you even think something might work. Thanks in advance.
Normal maps aren’t displacement maps. There are tools that will generate a displacement or height map from a normal map (Crazy Bump is the first one that comes to mind), that would be the best way to approach it.
The tessellations work from the normal map. There must be a way.
*bows to ZacD