Rendering normal maps in Maya

Justin Meisse · Jan 2007

Finally! Even though this is 2 years old it's the first time I've seen it, a way to render normal maps in Maya
Headus - Kileroo

I just wish I had this a few weeks ago

malcolm · Jan 2007

This is old shit man, like 2005 or something. Go with the pixho guy but the tech is still iffy. Maya8 still does not support normal map rendering natively. For the fail.

Brice Vandemoortele · Jan 2007

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what about high quality rendering? It works pretty good. Maya ftw

Daz · Jan 2007

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what about high quality rendering? It works pretty good. Maya ftw

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Er, how does high quality viewport display help with rendering?

Justin: yeah, what malcolm said. The pixhero solution is better. But it still utterly blows me away that it's not native http://www.pixero.com/downloads.html

Brice Vandemoortele · Jan 2007

sorry, I thought we were talking about realtime stuff

nacire · Jan 2007

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Maya8 still does not support normal map rendering natively

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Just set you're rendering mode to hardware instead of software or mental ray. I tend to prefer the hardware render for game assets anyway.

Also try downloading these shaders . They work in realtime without the need to turn on high quality viewport rendering. They won't render in software render mode though, in case you try.

Justin Meisse · Jan 2007

Thanks for the info, I haven't done any 3d since I posted this :P I need to get back on the wagon. The reason I'm not using high quality viewport rendering is because of alpha sorting and lighting issues. Unfortunately I'm running Maya 6.0, It's probably time to upgrade.

Super · Jan 2007

Huh? Can't you just plug it into a bump node and turn it to Tangent?

Justin Meisse · Jan 2007

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Maya8 still does not support normal map rendering natively

[/ QUOTE ]

Just set you're rendering mode to hardware instead of software or mental ray. I tend to prefer the hardware render for game assets anyway.

Also try downloading these shaders . They work in realtime without the need to turn on high quality viewport rendering. They won't render in software render mode though, in case you try.

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Son of a bitch! I search and search and everyone has these super complicated shader networks or or scripts that don't work in my version of Maya and the solution all this time was hardware rendering.

malcolm · Jan 2007

Super no, not until Maya8, any earlier version and it will convert the normal map to a height map at render time and give a fucked up mess.

Tulkamir · Jan 2007

Doesn't it render properly as normals if you connect the normal map file to the camera normal on the material node? I'm getting better results doing that at the moment than I am with the pixero one. (both in viewport rendering by rendering.)

malcolm · Jan 2007

I think he wants to render it with mentalray or maya software, also if you are using a simple example converting it to a height map at render time might not be noticeable, it's things like characters where there are drastic angles in the normal map.

Whargoul · Jan 2007

Maya 8 works in software if you use Mental Ray (last time I checked). Hook your shader network up just as if you were doing a hardware render (ie normal map into bump node set to tangent space), set renderer to Mental Ray - done!

malcolm · Jan 2007

You need to enable the maya derivitives setting or your mentalray render will not work, or so it says in the help file.

Whargoul · Jan 2007

Must be on by default then - works for me!

imurpet · Feb 2007

Justin,why not try Maya 8.0 version.Just as Whargoul advised,connect normal map to bump node set to tangent space,it works well with mental ray 3.5.

Rendering normal maps in Maya

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