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I can bake high poly normal maps with a lot of success, however if I try to bake a very simple indentation on a cube with no tapering I get a flat baked normal map, please see the below image to clarify what I mean. enter image description here

I dont know I am doing wrong because if I scale down the indented face slightly it will bake the normal map correctly, as seen in the image below.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Is scaling indented face down the only change between screenshots? E.g. objects selected on the screenshots are different, "hp" on the 1st and "lp" on the second, are you sure you selected correct (highpoly) object first and lowpoly last? $\endgroup$
    – Mr Zak
    Dec 5, 2017 at 16:41
  • $\begingroup$ Yes I selected the HP then the LP with my new image assigned to an image texture and not connected just selected. On the screen shots I hided the LP mesh so the indent can be seen but only did this after the bake process. $\endgroup$
    – CAD-MASTER-JIM
    Dec 5, 2017 at 16:49
  • $\begingroup$ Indeed as I tested looks like it bakes like that. Maybe this has to do with what normal map information is, as side faces of the indent didn't change neither X nor Y. Although bottom did change its Z.. however Z in normal map is blue which fits the background color, so this seems expected. $\endgroup$
    – Mr Zak
    Dec 5, 2017 at 17:10

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You're not doing anything wrong, what you want to do is just not possible to achieve with normal maps. If you look at it from the top, you can't see the sidewalls, therefore no normal information can be baked to the normalmap (the normal-information for the sides is infinitely small). normal maps can't represent height differences – only differences in the orientation of the faces.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for explaining I understand what is going on now, is there a way to achieve this result because the mesh I have modelled has multiple small indents like above without the taper and would preffer not to use additional faces. Worst case senario I will have to create a minimal taper so the normal map picks this up (I wonder how low I can take it? ha ha). Thank you Mr Zak & bstnhnsl you have answered my question $\endgroup$
    – CAD-MASTER-JIM
    Dec 5, 2017 at 21:21

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