Max: Normal Tangets, seams and Gamma/LUT
polycounter lvl 17
Posted this in Autodesk Area, but not getting any response, anyone else run into this?
So I am having a display issue error with my normals baked from XNormal and displayed in Max.
Turing Gamma/LUT correction off usually fixes the seam issue, but as a result your texture are not really correctly displayed.
Turning Gamma on shows very ugly seams.
If you go into the normal map and play around with the local to tangent buttons, switching back and forth a few times, while disabling the gamma on and off, it will magically FIX ITSELF!! You now have correct normal tangents showing with the gamma ON!
i havent gotten true repro steps for this, but i think for sure this is a display bug
attached pictures to help
image 1: Gamma/LUT off
image 2: Gamma/LUT on (seams on top caps of beams)
image 3: Gamma/LUT on after messing around a bit with options
image 4: Gamma on FIXED!
So I am having a display issue error with my normals baked from XNormal and displayed in Max.
Turing Gamma/LUT correction off usually fixes the seam issue, but as a result your texture are not really correctly displayed.
Turning Gamma on shows very ugly seams.
If you go into the normal map and play around with the local to tangent buttons, switching back and forth a few times, while disabling the gamma on and off, it will magically FIX ITSELF!! You now have correct normal tangents showing with the gamma ON!
i havent gotten true repro steps for this, but i think for sure this is a display bug
attached pictures to help
image 1: Gamma/LUT off
image 2: Gamma/LUT on (seams on top caps of beams)
image 3: Gamma/LUT on after messing around a bit with options
image 4: Gamma on FIXED!
Replies
edit: Try Marmoset if you have it, works for me.
My thread: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=95668
We've absolutely seen the issue on a few machines here at work, disabling the gamma/lut usually fixes it.
I've seen a problem where someone had the Gamma/LUT turned on and baked the map in max. Disabling it didn't help. They had to rebake the normals with it disabled, before it went away. Strange stuff.
game engines (as a rule) don't expect to be given gamma corrected textures so if you're making game engine assets you shouldn't have gamma correction enabled.
I don't mean to hijack the thread with my own problems, but could someone post a screen with their Photoshop colour management settings. Just to compare my settings, as I still believe Photoshop is editing/adding gamma.
You have to reverse/de-gamma non sRGB spaces like your normal and displacement maps or you get seams!
Just put a "composite map" before your texture >> Advanced Options: RGB= Gamma/Contrast -> 2.2
I don't see why cg.stefan.this dredged up this old thread. With a post like that I was on the verge of banning you as a spammer.
Well anyhow, some good reading here on Gamma
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Gamma
I didn't say it will fix a baked (2.2) normal map, but it "fixes" the display/offline rendering seam issue in Max, if you are useing a linear workflow in max and got bakes from f.e xnormal, which doesn't bake with 2,2. (referring to post 1)
(For offline rendering, you can also use the "gamma+gain" map.)
And actually it makes no sense to test a normal map in max, if it's not your target engine, unless you want to quickly check rough baking errors.
If gamma is enabled you should Override the gamma setting when you are selecting the file. You also need to plug it into a Normal Bump node.
Never worked for me. Only works if I reverse gamma in the shader, not on import.
AFAIK "Master Zap" (http://mentalraytips.blogspot.de/) mentioned somewhere, that there is/was a bug due the import override dialog.