Normal - In / Bump Out ?

[Falam]

Do you use Normal Maps in replace of Bump maps, are Bump maps passe ?

[SpookyMunky]

I wouldn't have started using normal maps if mental ray could handle bumps properly really, or at least it would be more of a split between using them and bump maps. It could just be me, but bumps in mental ray have always seemed pretty shocking when it comes to things like either scaling up or shrinking an object with a bump map added and then having to completely redo the settings, or if the camera gets too close they can be all blocky and then what.. scale up whole scene so camera can go closer ? .. hmmm .

Probably there is a way around all of this that I have never discovered (or it has been improved in newer releases), but it did make me re-think how I worked, and made normals more appealing in the respect that at least - besides maybe having to flip the tangents etc- what you create might render somewhat similarly in other apps or render engines, at least from a normal standpoint, whereas bumps the height ratio to bump brightness etc might vary wildly... perhaps

[Falam]

I wouldn't have started using normal maps if mental ray could handle bumps properly really, or at least it would be more of a split between using them and bump maps. It could just be me, but bumps in mental ray have always seemed pretty shocking when it comes to things like either scaling up or shrinking an object with a bump map added and then having to completely redo the settings, or if the camera gets too close they can be all blocky and then what.. scale up whole scene so camera can go closer ? .. hmmm .

Probably there is a way around all of this that I have never discovered (or it has been improved in newer releases), but it did make me re-think how I worked, and made normals more appealing in the respect that at least - besides maybe having to flip the tangents etc- what you create might render somewhat similarly in other apps or render engines, at least from a normal standpoint, whereas bumps the height ratio to bump brightness etc might vary wildly... perhaps

Thank you for the info, I'll start dumping bump maps for normals.

One question, I can't get normals to work in Softimage. I get a XSINormal node, plug it into the material bump slot, load my JPEG/TIF normal map, make sure it is set to color and the object renders black ? I read the docs and, it appears I'm doing everything right, not to Softimage ?

[SpookyMunky]

Hmm, if the poly mesh has a normal map node going into its surface, but doesn't have a tangent map it will render out as a constant colour, so that could be it. To create a tangent map you can either just go to Get-Property-Tangent, or for a bit more control: Get-Property-Ultimapper, then in the ultimappers advanced settings tab you can click adjust to vary the amount of smoothing. There might be other ways to do it in xsi, though I can't think on one justnow really, other apps can be used to create one also - e.g. if your mesh doesn't have one and you import it into mudbox it should add one.

Tangent data is stored under the objects polygon mesh - clusters - texture coordinates section if you need to delete them at any point, or rename them etc (since you can have multiple tangents for an object and just pick what one you want to use within a XSINormalMap3 node).

How well the tangents come out can depend highly on your mesh and uv map, so might be best to play around and see what happens. It isn't something I know a huge amount about, I keep meaning to read up more on the subject when I have issues and then forget about it once I have a decent render

Good luck

Edit: Also might be best to stay away from jpeg or any other form of lossy image compression when using normal maps I think, save some head scratching if you start noticing odd renders

Oh, and generally if you are unsure about a normal maps settings on export from whatever app you are creating them in and how they should relate to xsi's way of handling them, I find it best to start off with a simple normal map with just some raised text or something, then use that on a squashed sphere and some cubes or whatever and only one light. Then if it doesn't look like how you would expect when you rotate the object or move the light around you could either play with different settings on the creation of the normal map, or in xsinormalmap3 node play around with the different combination of settings you can get from ticking on and off "unbiased normal map" and "unbiased tangents" until it looks like it should.

[Falam]

Hmm, if the poly mesh has a normal map node going into its surface, but doesn't have a tangent map it will render out as a constant colour, so that could be it. To create a tangent map you can either just go to Get-Property-Tangent, or for a bit more control: Get-Property-Ultimapper, then in the ultimappers advanced settings tab you can click adjust to vary the amount of smoothing. There might be other ways to do it in xsi, though I can't think on one justnow really, other apps can be used to create one also - e.g. if your mesh doesn't have one and you import it into mudbox it should add one.

Tangent data is stored under the objects polygon mesh - clusters - texture coordinates section if you need to delete them at any point, or rename them etc (since you can have multiple tangents for an object and just pick what one you want to use within a XSINormalMap3 node).

How well the tangents come out can depend highly on your mesh and uv map, so might be best to play around and see what happens. It isn't something I know a huge amount about, I keep meaning to read up more on the subject when I have issues and then forget about it once I have a decent render

Good luck

Edit: Also might be best to stay away from jpeg or any other form of lossy image compression when using normal maps I think, save some head scratching if you start noticing odd renders

Oh, and generally if you are unsure about a normal maps settings on export from whatever app you are creating them in and how they should relate to xsi's way of handling them, I find it best to start off with a simple normal map with just some raised text or something, then use that on a squashed sphere and some cubes or whatever and only one light. Then if it doesn't look like how you would expect when you rotate the object or move the light around you could either play with different settings on the creation of the normal map, or in xsinormalmap3 node play around with the different combination of settings you can get from ticking on and off "unbiased normal map" and "unbiased tangents" until it looks like it should.

Thank you, I originally did apply UltiMapper. The problem was, and partially still is, my Normal map is extremely low, otherwise, thank you again for helping.