For a complete intro to modeling and baking for games, check out the full course: https://cgcookie.com/course/intro-to-normal-map-modeling-for-games

While working on my course about baking normal maps in Blender, I came across one type of artifact that stumped me up until last week. This artifact looks like what should be a flat surface is shattered into little glitchy shards.

The first clue to the problem is that I can hardly see the artifacts in Blender, but they are extremely obvious in Unity. That means that the issue has to be with how the maps are being exported or imported. I’ll save you the detective work though, and cut straight to the chase:

Bit depth and compression play a huge role in how your normal maps look in any game or render engine.