Display normal map in 3ds Max

SuperFranky

Is there a good way to display normal maps in 3ds Max's viewport in realtime? Just for previews of bakes, nothing fancy.

[PB]Snoelk

to present and check them like a real time engine you should use a shader for that.
anything else will just fool you. the tangent and binormals are always presented wrongly.
i can post some tiny shaders for directx9 or nitrous directx 11 if you want
only a small shader to check normals with or without diffuse map

SuperFranky

[PB]Snoelk wrote: »

to present and check them like a real time engine you should use a shader for that.
anything else will just fool you. the tangent and binormals are always presented wrongly.
i can post some tiny shaders for directx9 or nitrous directx 11 if you want
only a small shader to check normals with or without diffuse map

That would be great, thanks:)

[PB]Snoelk

i got the stuff in the office and im not there tomorrow. but will send post some stuff on thursday

SuperFranky

[PB]Snoelk wrote: »

i got the stuff in the office and im not there tomorrow. but will send post some stuff on thursday

Thanks, I'll be waiting:)

AdvisableRobin

Both 3DSMax and Maya are known to have problems displaying normal maps in their viewports, you shouldn't trust them. I personally use Toolbag 2 for previewing bakes.

SuperFranky

AdvisableRobin wrote: »

Both 3DSMax and Maya are known to have problems displaying normal maps in their viewports, you shouldn't trust them. I personally use Toolbag 2 for previewing bakes.

Yeah, I do that too, it's just a hassle to rebake and reload when you are changing uvs or troubleshooting your bakes.

pior

Xoliul
http://viewportshader.com/

3Point
http://www.3pointstudios.com/3pointshader_about.shtml

Brice's shader
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49920&highlight=brdf+shader

And then there is also the built-in directx shader in Max, but I am not sure how that works in the recent releases of the program.

SuperFranky

pior wrote: »

Xoliul
http://viewportshader.com/

3Point
http://www.3pointstudios.com/3pointshader_about.shtml

Brice's shader
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49920&highlight=brdf+shader

And then there is also the built-in directx shader in Max, but I am not sure how that works in the recent releases of the program.

Interesting, I'll check them out. Thanks:thumbup:

Millenia

You can use Max's standard materials fine if you're just previewing stuff, plug it into the bump slot at 100 opacity as "normal bump" and then a bitmap inside the normal bump, then tick this in the viewport:

SuperFranky

Millenia, thanks. That's just what I need

Neox

AdvisableRobin wrote: »

Both 3DSMax and Maya are known to have problems displaying normal maps in their viewports, you shouldn't trust them.

uhm... what?

please don't spread such statements...

It's totally bogus, max' normal previews are fine, just as are mayas or Marmosets, in the end it doesn't matter what tool you preview your normals with, if the normalmap is synced to marmoset it will look great there and not so great in unity or another engine. If your engine is synced to Maya's tangentbase, looking at the normals in Maya is perfectly fine, same with max.

The only thing you need to keep in mind for max is, that the viewport isn't synced to the baker, so you need normalmaps synced for max' viewport, or a shader to sync the viewport to the baker. 3pointshader comes to mind.

monster

Just to add to Neox point, you can also change the display method for normal maps in the 3ds Max preferences.

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-86205F0D-6143-432A-B0D4-5CCC4DB2699F-htm.html

SuperFranky

Thanks for all the answers, it was really helpful

AdvisableRobin

Neox wrote: »

uhm... what?

please don't spread such statements...

It's totally bogus, max' normal previews are fine, just as are mayas or Marmosets, in the end it doesn't matter what tool you preview your normals with, if the normalmap is synced to marmoset it will look great there and not so great in unity or another engine. If your engine is synced to Maya's tangentbase, looking at the normals in Maya is perfectly fine, same with max.

The only thing you need to keep in mind for max is, that the viewport isn't synced to the baker, so you need normalmaps synced for max' viewport, or a shader to sync the viewport to the baker. 3pointshader comes to mind.

OK, I had some questions but I think I answered them while writing them all out, what you said makes sense and prompted me to read up a bit more. I appreciate the correction, last thing I want to do is spread misinformation.

huffer

Hijaking time! When baking in max 2014 and previewing with a standard shader, sometimes my meshes have some slight shading errors (look like inverted triangularization, opposite from the bake or different vertex normals). If I convert to editable mesh or add an edit normals everything looks right (except with converting to mesh, which adds some of these errors but removes others). What gives?

Neox

before baking, add a convert to poly modifier, and limit the polygonsize to 3, now you got your model triangulated, bake it this way, does the problem still exist? i can only imagine that the renderer does triangulate differently than the viewport. no clue but i would nocht be surprised

huffer

I did try it like so, the problem is still there, but there's less errors. Unless I add an Edit Normals on top of everything it doesn't look 100 % perfect. Plus if I triangulate it's difficult to create LODS after. I got the advice of of applying the baked normal map from the triangulated mesh to the untriangulated mesh and working like that, but there are more issues this way.

Neox

thats why you use the modifier to not hard triangulate it but make sure it gets processed as you have the inner triangulation in your viewport