xNormal

xNormal, developed by Santiago Orgaz, has become an essential tool for anyone in the 3D community looking to generate normal, ambient occlusion, and displacement maps. The latest version, 3.17.16, continues to impress with advanced functionalities, ensuring seamless texture transfer from highpoly models to lowpoly meshes, even with differing topologies.

This free download, which falls under the System Utilities category and specifically the Fonts subcategory, also offers an interactive 3D viewer. This viewer supports multiple mesh and texture formats, complete with shaders, real-time soft shadows, and a glow effect, enhancing the overall user experience.

Whether you are using Windows XP/XP Professional, Vista, 7, 8, 10, or 11, xNormal is fully compatible, accommodating a wide range of operating systems. The xNormal.exe file ensures a straightforward installation process, further adding to the program’s appeal. For those looking for previous versions, 3.1 is also available to download.

The program’s versatile tools include height maps, cavity maps, occlusion, tangent/object space, and spherical harmonics tools, making it a comprehensive solution for any 3D artist. Licensed as Freeware, xNormal offers powerful features at no cost, making it accessible for anyone in need of robust texture-mapping solutions.

Pros:

• User-friendly interactive 3D viewer
• Support for multiple mesh and texture formats
• Comprehensive toolset for generating various maps
• Compatible with a wide range of operating systems
• Freeware, making it budget-friendly

Cons:

• The interface may seem dated to some users
• Limited to the Windows operating system family only

You may want to check out more software, such as PopChar, FontList or X-Fonter, which might be similar to xNormal.