Your Normal Maps Are a Lie. AI Can’t Fix That.
AI normal maps look like a breakthrough — until you try to use them. The top comment on Gemini 3 Pro’s announcement says ‘I’ve tried, didn’t work.’ That’s because normal maps are lossy approximations, not ground truth. Generating them from a 2D image is an ill-posed problem solved by guesswork. The result is a plausible-looking image that breaks your 3D pipeline. Stop rewarding the hype. Demand the geometry.