What purpose does normal mapping serve in material design?

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Normal mapping plays a crucial role in enhancing the visual fidelity of 3D models by providing a realistic texture appearance. It achieves this by using a texture to simulate the complexities of surface details without the need for additional geometry, which would otherwise increase the polygon count and impact performance.

When normal mapping is applied, it encodes the normal vectors of a surface, allowing light to interact with the surface in a way that mimics the appearance of depth and detail. This creates the illusion of bumps, grooves, and other intricacies on a flat surface by altering how light reflects off the material, making it appear much more detailed and realistic than it truly is.

This technique is particularly advantageous in games and applications where performance is critical, as it enables artists to create visually complex surfaces while maintaining a manageable load on the rendering system. By using normal maps, developers can enhance the aesthetics of their materials, making them more visually engaging without the computational costs associated with modeling every tiny detail in 3D.

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