[FONT=“Calibri”]So I was reading on the polycount forums about using world space normal maps to break up tiling on a map. Can someone explain how something like that works? What is a world space normal map as opposed to tangent space normal maps?
you can use normal maps just like albedo maps to break up different areas of the material based on distance and blend them together, there are heaps of tutorials for in on these forums, YouTube and polycount
World space normal maps have nothing to do with breaking up tiling. They describe the normal details of a model in world space instead of local space based off the models normals and tangents.
In practical use, world space normal maps use more memory than tangent space, and they cannot easily be used on anything that is animated, distorts, or bends, unless the engine and shaders fully support it.
Detail normals are used to break up tiling and are typically tiling tangent space textures.