Clarification of the manual page about normal baking

[zingbat]

This page here:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manua ... ormal_Maps

Normal maps in Blender store a normal as follows:

* Red maps from (0-255) to X (-1.0 - 1.0)
* Green maps from (0-255) to Y (-1.0 - 1.0)
* Blue maps from (0-255) to Z (0.0 - 1.0)

Since normals all point towards a viewer, negative Z-values are not stored (they would be invisible anyway). In Blender we store a full blue range, although some other implementations also map blue colors (128-255) to (0.0 - 1.0). The latter convention is used in "Doom 3" for example.

What does it mean that we don't see normals pointing towards z- ? What we see depends on the direction the camera is pointing.

I assume this refers only to normals baked with camera or tangent and not the ones baked with object and world, am i right? Does this means that for object and world blue maps from (0-255) to z (-1.0 - 1.0) ?

[Master Letch]

lol hey...

all it really means is that the negetive z would be behind the object you have your camera pointed at... not sure why blender would store a full range...