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Normal Maps


Gus_Rayvus
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Thanks Dean,

I think they work the same across the board for any program that supports them. But I’m using max.

I was just wondering if anyone has switched to normal mapping instead of displacement and bump mapping.

It seems like it is become the industry standard in film and games. I’m thinking about trying to implement them in my work flow

And I was wondering if anyone has come into any problems with this? Or any great results with it?

Thanks

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Yeah, that is good tutorial; I’m not really asking how to make normal maps though.

I was just interested if other people have started using them in their renderings or animations?

It just seems like a great technology and I haven’t heard a lot about it on this forum.

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I doubt they're being used alot in film, I could be wrong, but as long as you're using PRman, displacements are a breeze, it cuts through them like a hot knife through butter, but for games I can certainly see it, it has to render in real time,

 

I'm still using displacements for now, and bump maps when great detail isn't needed...

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i had a look at them a while back, trying it inconjunction with vray but version 1.47.03 doesn't seem to support them - from what i know great way to keep poly count down / yet detail up in a scene.......... if vray 1.5 supports them i'll be giving it ago again!

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in that case i'll give it another go! do you have any problems creating the normal map via vray or do you do that using the scanline render?

 

also, do you know any good tuts for the complete process? what i've tried to do in the past was create a wall with displacement for the bricks / mortar and then capture that info in a normal map, so not to require the displacemnet modifier in a final render.

 

James

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It needs the light on to get the normal map effect, Im not sure if it will work with directional lights or not but you can try it. Most of my renders are for ingame models and im just getting into architectural rendering, so some things i havent tested yet ... Is probally a good thing to experiment with. Just remember that normal mapping uses a blend of your scenes lighting to work. I think the formula is something like diffuse*normalmap*light in most shaders. Although in nvidia's FX Composer theres a sample shader that uses blending ive never seen and gets uncomparable results ...

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