I avoid Normal Maps, but when I have to use them from other apps, I've
had the best results by doing the following, which gets me usable
results from Zbrush normal maps (and Mudbox too, I think...)
1. select the mesh and add a Tangent Property (Property > Tangent) (to
get rid of the unsightly vertex colors in the viewport, which can kill
performance, use Display Options > Vertex Colors > Never Show)
2. in the shader tree, add an XSINormalMap3 node and plug into the
material's Bump port
3. in that normal map node's properties, set the 'tspaceid' to the UV
map you want to use.
4. uncheck 'Unbiased Normal Map'
5. under the Tangent section, select 'Tangents'
6. keep 'Unbiased Tangents' checked on.
In most cases, that works great. But on occastion, we still have seams
that we have to deal with. In that case, one thing you can try to is to
change the 'Smoothing' value for the mesh's tangent property (mesh >
clusters > Texture_Coordinates > Tangents > Smoothing). Also, while
you're in that property panel, might want to switch the State value to
'Only update on topo change.'
Good Luck. Normal Maps are weird.
*Tim Crowson
*/Lead CG Artist/
*Magnetic Dreams Animation Studio, Inc.
*2525 Lebanon Pike, Building C. Nashville, TN 37214
*Ph* 615.885.6801 | *Fax* 615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com
[email protected]
On 12/12/2012 9:54 AM, Adam Sale wrote:
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] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
does this help?
http://vimeo.com/19399592
On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 10:40 AM, Adam Sale <[email protected]
<mailto:[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]
<mailto:[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]>
[mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>] *On
Behalf Of *Adam Sale
*Sent:* Wednesday, December 12, 2012 2:15 AM
*To:* [email protected]
<mailto:[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>
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