normal maps positioning

Hi. You bake this normal map from high poly to low poly.

Here’s a very quick example, but you can look up “normal map baking” on YouTube for a better tutorial


Alternatively, you can turn a diffuse into a normal map
How to do this depends on the image editing program you’re using but here’s an example for photoshop

Check the size/ratio of the texture you're using, then check if the normal map (before you render it) is set to the correct size/ratio.

It's easy when you work with sizes for Sims projects, because you nearly always work with the "power of 2" numbers (start with 2, then multiply with 2 to get the next number - 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096... - if you know one number, you can multiply or divide with 2 to get the previous or next number. For most projects you rarely go lower or higher than 128 and 4096 pixels)

The ratio is usually 1:2, 2:1 or 1:1, so examples of sizes could be 2048x4096, 1024x512 or 1024x1024 pixels.

If you want to fit a larger scale to a smaller scale, you keep the same ratio but change the size, so 1024x1024 and 2048x2048 would work together (same ratio, scaled x1), 2048x4096 and 512x1024 would work together (same ratio, scaled x2).

1024x1024 and 2048x4096 would not work together (wrong ratio).