Creating a normal map of a fluid simulation
polycounter lvl 3
I'm a VFX artist and I found this video a little while ago of someone who created an animated smoke texture with an animated normal map.
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doICanjKmpQ"]VIDEO[/ame]
I'm wondering how you can render a normal map from a fluid simulation created by something like Maya Fluids or FumeFX. I've searched around and could never find a proper answer. The closest I got to a solution was to actually light the smoke sim from the top, bottom, left, and right, and put those together to make a normal map, but it's a tedious process, and the results weren't very great looking.
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doICanjKmpQ"]VIDEO[/ame]I'm wondering how you can render a normal map from a fluid simulation created by something like Maya Fluids or FumeFX. I've searched around and could never find a proper answer. The closest I got to a solution was to actually light the smoke sim from the top, bottom, left, and right, and put those together to make a normal map, but it's a tedious process, and the results weren't very great looking.
Replies
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/fumefx-rgb-light-rig
It's not hard to setup the lighting rig manually. Here's an old tutorial for Max that shows the rig:
http://www.bencloward.com/tutorials_normal_maps11.shtml
With some renderers you're able to set up a normal map render element, also called a RGB pass. No special lighting needed.