assign the normal map to your material in the bump slot, ensuring to set it as a tangent space normal. Turn on 'high quality rendering' in the viewport.
Also if it doesn;t seem to be working when you turn it on, make sure you changhe the program's compatibility to say windows 2000 and it should render properly, I had this problem once with a different PC
Hardware lighting does not look the same as default render. You have to adjust the parameters if you want to make them look good in hardware or default, it doesn't work both ways.
I have no idea if this will help, but you could try Vailias' Maya CG Shader. It looks very useful. Haven't tried it myself, but I will soon enough as I'm having similar problems over here.
it could be that your video card doesn't work with high quality mode... my ATI card at work doesn't... well it half works... I see the normal maps but the model is covered in ugly black crud.
Unfortunately there are a number of funky issues with it. Try viewing with default lights instead of scene lights (the 6 key), and delete any vertex color sets from the object in question.
An odd solution... but it might work:
If you have Maya 7.0, you should be able to view normal maps in your viewport okay. Maya 8 has issues with some video cards, and compatibility doesn't always work.
With me, Maya 8 doesn't view HQR, but Maya 7 does. However, Alpha sorting in Maya 7 is crap, but works like a dream in Maya 8. I hate it.
Maybe you forgot to check that hardware texturing was on?
I tend to forget sometimes to turn it on again after I use the numerals to switch between wires and shaded and it always gets turned of automatically when i switch this way.
1.Hardware texturing checked
2.high quality mode on
3.Check so that you use atleast one lightsource
If it does'nt work it might be something wrong with the graphics card or drivers, as mentioned above.
Ati cards screw up with high quality rendering. its why I wrote that shader to begin with. They might do ok if you have a very recent model, but I've had trouble on my X700 and other cards. (nvidia included but that was a few gens ago)
Its showing up completely black because when HighQuality is turned on with an ati card it interprets the normals backwards. To fix it select your model, go to edit polygons->normals->reverse and it will look better. You may still get horrid black artifacts though.
Do try the shader. Latest version and additional documentation is here.
Replies
If you have Maya 7.0, you should be able to view normal maps in your viewport okay. Maya 8 has issues with some video cards, and compatibility doesn't always work.
With me, Maya 8 doesn't view HQR, but Maya 7 does. However, Alpha sorting in Maya 7 is crap, but works like a dream in Maya 8. I hate it.
I tend to forget sometimes to turn it on again after I use the numerals to switch between wires and shaded and it always gets turned of automatically when i switch this way.
1.Hardware texturing checked
2.high quality mode on
3.Check so that you use atleast one lightsource
If it does'nt work it might be something wrong with the graphics card or drivers, as mentioned above.
Its showing up completely black because when HighQuality is turned on with an ati card it interprets the normals backwards. To fix it select your model, go to edit polygons->normals->reverse and it will look better. You may still get horrid black artifacts though.
Do try the shader. Latest version and additional documentation is here.