Adam, I used to do a little FXTree work with normal maps. I plug in a node and flip the Y channel. What version of SI do you use?
Do you need it for Viewport or for Render? For render, I do suggest NOT to use normal maps, however there is a compound that works pretty well, I can't recall the name. There are two important things to consider 1. Is Y up in the normal map creation program? 2. Do you have the same tangent space? It used to be mostly the issue. If you can, try to mimc the same normal as in Mudbox (I think it's full smooth, all edges are soft, etc) 3. Make sure that play with the unbiased parameters... 4. Try to use bumps, instead of normal J From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Adam Sale Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 4:55 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Normal Maps in Softimage No.. the ultimapper solution is fine, its the exported maps from external apps I'm having trouble with. On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 7:45 AM, Stephen Davidson <[email protected]> wrote: does this help? http://vimeo.com/19399592 On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 10:40 AM, Adam Sale <[email protected]> wrote: hey Wayne.. Thanks for the tips. My case is for Rendering with Mental / Vray I just can't believe that OOTB SOftimage still doesn't have a proper Normal Map. Its been requested a few times now, but often gets overlooked. On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 5:23 AM, Williams, Wayne <[email protected]> wrote: Because Softimage doesn't have proper cage functionality most folks I know that still use Soft have ditched baking normals with it. Xnormal (freeware) is pretty much the quasi-standard app for baking these days. 8 bit maps are fairly standard in my travels. If you are trying to get more "bump" to your normal you can duplicate the map in photoshop, double click it to bring up the layer dialog and set to overlay and uncheck the blue channel. Merge those together and you have a "stronger" map. Another thing to note is depending on what you will be viewing in you may need to invert the green channel of the normal map, else the normals will look flipped weird. Also, if you are going to be viewing this in a game engine as the final result, it is typically standard workflow to check your normals there, because in the end, it doesn't really matter what they look like in Soft/Maya/Max. -wayne From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Adam Sale Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 2:15 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Normal Maps in Softimage So, My Softimage decided to play hardball with me and stopped working earlier this evening. What I had wanted to test out tonight were Normal Maps in Softimage. I don't do a whole lot of texturing , and have known the normal map to be a little strange in my past dealings with it. One of my students is having an issue generating normal maps out of mudbox and getting them to work in Softimage. Is anyone having success with this, or do you generally import high res meshes into soft and use Ultimapper to create the maps. When creating maps, is it best to create 16 bit or float maps/ Do they always give superior results to 8 bit? My main issue with the normal maps out of Mudbox, is that they don't look like the correct scale or relief of the normals mesh in midbox, or even when I apply the normals to a similar mesh in Maya, and the fact the normal map 3 node doesnt allow us to scale normals is a bit perplexing. The workaround with mixing the normal map with a mix 2 color node set to mix with RGB at .5 and B at 1 doesn't quite cut it.. Is there a good working solution that I am simply missing? A better normalMap node perhaps? Irie.. Adam -- Best Regards, Stephen P. Davidson (954) 552-7956 <tel:%28954%29%20552-7956> [email protected] Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C. Clarke <http://www.3danimationmagic.com> <http://www.3danimationmagic.com> <http://www.3danimationmagic.com>
