3d sculpting, normal maps, maya, zbrush, and photoshop

Just finishing up my character in maya and finishing all the unwrapping. I want to take it into zbrush now and sculpt my hi rez detail to be used as a normal map...

Im wondering If i can then use my normal map as a template for painting my actual color and textures in adobe photoshop, so that everything matches perfect?

you could convery you normal map to a grayscale image and possibly overlay it on the texture to get some of the areas to darken etc. Better way to do this would be to export a displacement I would expect though.

hi hunnybee,
the main problem with using normal maps as a template for painting is that they are intended to represent geometry rather than light information. a better option for a template would be to bake an ambient occlusion map, then take this into photoshop to use it as a template for painting. good luck