Maya and Normal Maps

Illusions

Ok, so I've run into a bit of a snag. I've got a normal map I wish to use in Maya. The normal map was baked out using transfer maps in Maya. However, it looks like complete ass when applied to the low-poly and rendered in Maya. I've deduced that its not the normal map itself, since I've thrown both the low-poly and the normal map into xNormal's viewer and they look fine. I'm using a plain blinn shader with the normal map attached to the bump mapping node, with 2D Bump Attributes set to "Use as: Tangent Space Normals". If anyone knows, or has run into this problem before, I'm all ears.

Maya:


xNormal:

dnorth

For whatever reason, normal maps don't render correctly using Maya software renderer. For viewing the model realtime, you can turn on "high quality" in the viewport and it should behave pretty well with a blinn, including adjusting spec color and eccentricity.

To render with Maya Software, though, you'll probably want to use the JS NormalMapper shader, available at www.pixero.com. It works really well, but you'll need to check "flip green channel" on in the shader node or the normals will look backwards.

I've heard people say that they rendered their normal maps with Mental Ray right out of the box with a regular blinn or phong, but whenever I've tried that the results weren't very good. To render in Mental Ray, there's also a Mental Ray version of JSNormalMapper on that site that works well - the only issue is that it only works with the perp camera.

Hope that helps.

Edit: Heh, looks like I replied before the pics were posted. Hmmm, not exactly sure what's going on there. What was the Maya one rendered with? Software, MR, hardware?

Illusions

Yeah the Maya one was rendered with Software. I'll give the JS NormalMapper a try tomorrow. Thats another problem I have though. I can't view the normal map in realtime because the videocard on my laptop doesn't support high quality rendering. Woohoo! Thanks for the reply though, I hope it works out, because otherwise I'm screwed for my senior project.

Edit: I'm really peeved though that we're up to Maya 8.5 and we can't just software render normal mapped objects.

Tulkamir

Yea, Maya rendering is ass. In the past I've gotten better results by connecting the "out color" value to "normal camera" in the connections editor rather than just applying it as a bump map on your blinn. Not sure if that's still the case though, that was with Maya 7.0.

You shouldn't be screwed on your project no matter what though. JS NormalMapper works forsure, as does rendering with Mental Ray.

jogshy

Call me crazy but I think the renderer from Maya you posted just needs to flip the vertical component on the normal map... If you see with detail the bump from Maya renderer has the "height" inverted... where it should be "embossed" is "elevaded" and vice-versa... I have no idea really but try to make that, perhaps can solve it.

Illusions

Woo! Ok, so it renders out properly without any fixes through Mental Ray. I guess I'll just assign Mental Ray as the renderer for the layer the apple is on. Lucky too...it looks like the JSNormal Shader only has an 8.5 version for 64 Bit windows...which I don't have . Anyway its up and working, thanks all!

SuperOstrich

I don't know anything about how to get Maya's software renderer to look correct, but that top image of yours is treating the normal map as a plain bump map. The cracks are the dead giveaway.

rooster

I ran into this a while ago- for future reference if anyone wants to render normal maps from a normal mapped source object, transfer maps is maya software so you'll need JS Normalmapper for it to work. It does tho