Chapter 22. Baking Normal Maps on the GPU — Diogo Teixeira

• Source: https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/gpugems3/part-iv-image-effects/chapter-22-baking-normal-maps-gpu
• Volume: GPU Gems 3
• Note: add-only excerpt; images omitted.

Summary of full chapter read

Bake normals by projecting low-poly (working) toward high-poly (reference) on GPU. Rasterize working mesh in UV space; ray from boundary cage; uniform grid + 3D-DDA traverse; closest cage hit → tangent-space normal.

Data: 3D grid texture, triangle-list 2D tex, vertex/normal tex. Cage encloses both meshes. SM3 loop limits → nested loops or multipass/tiles. AA via multi-ray or jittered multipass. Midrange GPU faster than CPU bakers (Melody/xNormal) in tests. Extensible to displacement/cavity maps.