a little problem with Normal maps

Gardini

Hey guys, i have some problems with normal maps
I don't no exactly what is the problem, maybe the low model has to less polygons, or maybe my render is not apropriated u.u

someone can me plz ?
Forgive my english, i'm chinese
Thank you so much !

EarthQuake

maya has some issues rendering normal maps as bump maps(with mental ray i think?)

you can preview them in the viewport if you press 6 to go into textured mode, and turn on high quality rendering from the "renderer" dropdown in the viewport. this should be better than doing renders anyway as you can see everyting in realtime(as long as your video card supports it)

Cyrael

make sure when you assign the normal map under use as: it is put to tangent space normals as opposed to bump map. might be your problem.. still figuring out maya and normal maps myself. good luck!

Gardini

Hey EarthQuake! Tks for your support but i use 3D Max and XSI...and both the same results

Gardini

I'm max user, so i don't no what's going on here, i don't no if the problem is my render, if is the low poly mesh.....
Look this in topogun making the low poly mesh with high with reference...
I has Gts 250 video card

kodde

Could it also perhaps be the "Use as:"settings in the Bump2D Hypershade node?

Make sure it's set to Normal Space Tangent since that corresponds to the type of normal map you are using. It's probably set to "Bump" by default unless you had Transfer Maps create a shader for you or anything similar.

Gardini

I'm max user

SpeCter

jinxx wrote: »

I'm max user

Then try this:http://www.bencloward.com/shaders_simpleNormalMap.shtml
Or Xoliul´s Shader.
Just Change the Type of the Material from Standard to Direct X.

This won´t show up during Render but you can see it Realtime.

Or try this if you want to see it during rendering:
If you haven´t done so you should not load a Bitmap in your Bump Map Slot, you should load a Normal Map in your bump Map slot and add the Bitmap(which contains your normal map) there.

And you should try to flip the Channels it seems your up is facing in the Wrong direction, probably you just have to Flip the Green Channel

System

Not sure what problems you are talking about? The bake looks very good but the display of the normal map isn't so good because it's a render with standard lighting. Try using a viewport shader to show it off properly, Xoliul has a great one here

For render pump up the normal map to around 1.6-1.8, leave the bump value at 30 and add some omni's. Really it would be better to add ambient occlusion in the diffuse slot as well as the normal bump normal map.

SpeCter

GCMP wrote: »

Not sure what problems you are talking about? The bake looks very good but the display of the normal map isn't so good because it's a render with standard lighting. Try using a viewport shader to show it off properly, Xoliul has a great one here

For render pump up the normal map to around 1.6-1.8, leave the bump value at 30 and add some omni's. Really it would be better to add ambient occlusion in the diffuse slot as well as the normal bump normal map.

Basically his normal map expects the green channel to point the normal upwards, while 3dsmax expects it to point downwards, thats why i said he should flip the green channel.

There is nothing wrong with the bake, but you should see that it doesn´t show it correctly because of 3dsmax´s behavior

Gardini

OMG guys tks so much, i'm really happy! I spend the all day to do this u.u
So....it really good but now this example isn't so good...
The nose and ear for exemple...i need change the lowmesh topology to fix that?

System

Yeh, there's that and then there's the fact that 3ds max doesn't do a very good job of rendering a normal map full stop. It does a terrible job with just standard lighting (as in this case) regardless of which channel is flipped. Lighting is required in all cases to show the normal off properly.

Gardini

So where people usually render their work with normalmap to do something about this level of quality?
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=074958

SpeCter

jinxx wrote: »

So where people usually render their work with normalmap to do something about this level of quality?
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=074958

You have to give your mesh more definition, the most important part is silhouette, thats why your nose doesn´t look right from the side.The low poly´s silhouette should match the high poly as close as possible. So if the low poly has got a flat nose like yours , the normal map can´t do something about it, because it just creates an illusion of detail not real detail

And as GCMP said you need light in your scene, without light your normals won´t show up.


Edit: Additionally Specular Maps can help to show of the normal map even more and you can control the highlights so that they don´t appear where they should not

Edit2: Take a look here for more information about normal mapping:http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=48305