Normal mapping troubles

biggest_kid

Hey guys i have recently been having trouble normal mapping I have been trying for months now and just cannot get it to work. Ive made both my low poly and high poly models, and applied poly smoothing to the low poly model aswell as uv co-ordinates.

Now i go to "Render to Texture," and use mental.ray.no.gi, and pick my high res object to take the normal map from. I then setup the cage, making sure it completely encompases both models and doesnt overlap itself anywhere. I then do a render to texture and i still get red parts, even though my cage is not intersected by either model and does not overlap itself.

So i go and open up the material editor anyway, and apply the material to the bump slot. Then assign the material to the low res mesh. Now this is where im having most trouble. Even with the normal map applied, nothing actually changes on the low poly model. As in the normal map does not actually make the low poly model look any different. I need to know why this is and how i can fix it.

Thanks,
biggest kid

penrod

It would help if you could show a screen shot of what exactly your talking about. Are you turning directX on when you apply the normal map material?

Mark Dygert

In the bump slot put a "normal bump" then put your actual bump file in that. Switch the "show standard map in viewport" (blue checker box) to "show hardware map in viewport" (pink checker box).

Red means missed rays, it's pretty common to miss rays on open edges. Sometimes its unavoidable. A bake is often the start of a normal map not the end result. Sometimes you have to jump in and clean it up.

Showing the material and a viewport grab might really help like penrod mentioned.

biggest_kid

Yes! I tried your idea Vig of putting the "normal bump" in the bump slot, and it worked! Thats the only thing i changed which means it must be the thing that made it work. I couldnt change the blue check box to a pink checker box so i just turned the blue check box off. I also couldnt turn on directx as it is greyed-out for some reason.

Now all i have to do is fix the cage up to get rid of the ugly bits on the normal map and ill be on my way to a successful normal mapping career lol.