Softimage XSI normal maps in render tree

Ephesians 2:8-9 · May 2008

Adding normal maps in the render tree. How do i do this and see it with "Q" quick render or at the very least, "open GL? Most importantly i am tyring to at least hook it up correclty in the render tree. I've tried to do so through image clips and simply plugging them into the material as "bump" but nohting seems to work.

Sage · May 2008

Here is an old way of doing it. Worked for both viewports and renderer.

http://www.vast.ws/resources/xsi/tutorials/tutorials.html

Popeye9 · May 2008

I dont have XSI in front of me its at school and we are on break. To make normal maps work though is to assign a tangents property to your model then you can hook up your normal map generator node in the render tree and you should be able to then see the effect in your render.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Ephesians 2:8-9 · May 2008

Popeye9 wrote: »

I dont have XSI in front of me its at school and we are on break. To make normal maps work though is to assign a tangents property to your model then you can hook up your normal map generator node in the render tree and you should be able to then see the effect in your render.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Ahhhh, I see. How do you apply a tangent property then?

ElysiumGX · May 2008

Mentalray and Realtime solutions for this can be used at the same time.

For quick rendering, in the rendertree, select the Bumpmap Generator node, and connect it to the Bump slot of your material node. Click on the Bumpmap Generator, and select New, Image From File. Select your bump/normalmap. If you're using a Normalmap, you must give your low poly object a tangent property for it to display accurately. Under Property, select Tangent, and click on the low poly. Done. If you edit the geometry, you may have to reassign the Tangent values.

For realtime viewing, the easiest way to view this is to use Ultimapper (or GPUSurfaceFX2, for older versions). The property window for this function will give you a preview in the realtime viewport by configuring the rendertree for you, and applying Tangents to the object. This gives you the option for DX of OpenGL, and you can update or replace the Images used from the rendertree nodes. And, of course, this can be used to generate your maps as well.

Another solution is to connect an FX node to the Realtime slot of a Material node. From there you can load an external premade FX shader file into the node. A basic phong FX shader gives you the option to use an Albedo (color), Ambient, and Normalmap image. Some require 3 point lights within the scene, and some require spec map values to be assigned in the Alpha channel of the color map, etc. This works great if you're creating your own shaders in Mental Mill or coding them yourself. The FX shader can be edited and reloaded from within XSI.

Yet another solution is to open up Netview and grab some presets. Assuming you have a model created and UV mapped, with a basic MentalRay material applied. Open your Netview Local window. Application>View>Netview. From the top, select the Add-ons tab. Choose your shader language of choice...DX, OpenGL, or Cg. From the left menu, under Factory Presets, choose Simple Materials. From the right side, choose one of the many preset materials (such as Phong Bump Textured Specular Map). Drag and Drog this into the Rendertree and connect it to the Realtime slot of the Material node. Switch the viewport to the proper Realtime View. From the Rendertree, replace the premade images with your own. Be sure to use the proper number of lights in the scene specified in the preset's description.

There are more ways to go about this, but they're more complicated and require some code.

Good luck. Feel free to ask more questions if you get stuck.

Ephesians 2:8-9 · May 2008

my problem is i am very new to the render tree. I Learned XSI under a gaming pipline rather than learning it out right, so alot of this info is hard to obsorb. When you write things like "mental Ray Material", I have no idea what that means in terms of setting up XSI.

ElysiumGX · May 2008

Sorry. MentalRay is XSI's default raytrace rendering application. It's fully integrated into the XSI software. I was simply referring to the MentalRay nodes, to differentiate them from the realtime nodes. They cannot be mixed together. But they can be connected separately to one material node at once, so you can Render, OR view them in Realtime.

This is a quick example of what a simple material for both raytracing and realtime rendering would like like in the rendertree:

Here I'm using a Phong shader for rendering with a checker pattern attached to the color and ambient properties. The "Image" node is inserted automatically. On the bottom, I'm using an FX node, with a simple Phong shader loaded. From there I'm using the same checker pattern as before for color and ambient, plus a normalmap image of an XSI logo. I take the same normalmap and plug it into the bumpmap generator, and then bump property of the final material node, so that it can also be raytraced.

If you're having trouble displaying normalmaps, I would advise you first become familiar with the rendertree. It uses the same method of Material creation you'll find in the current Unreal Editor, and mental mill, and is very robust. It gives you a more detailed explaination for what's going on behind the scenes being rendered, with many options to adjust.

Ephesians 2:8-9 · May 2008

Worked, thank you for your patience and going into all the detail.

shinja · Jun 2008

elisium gx thanks for the info. I tried what you are doing there with the normal shader but had no luck with finding a phong fx shader or making one / loading it into XSI with metal mill. Could you explain how to load mental mill shader files into XSI ? like showing a FX tree like what you did.

[HP] · Jul 2008

Hi guys.

Sorry for the bump but I'm having problems trying to display normal maps and/or specular maps into XSI's viewport!

How in the world can be so god damn complicated to view normal maps in XSI, in 3DsMax you can view those simply by the click of a button on the material manager!

Can someone, PLEASE, redirect me to some kind of complete tutorial, guide, anything, that might light my path trying to get Normal Maps to be displayed into XSI's viewport!

Thanks in advance.

Softimage XSI normal maps in render tree

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