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1. Can normal map be used in animation?

   

   Topic by guangh69 · Sep 2009 · Home› Technical Talk

   I found that normal map deformed when I deformed my chracrer. Does normal map can only be used in suituation where without deformation?

2. Re: Can normal map be used in animation?

   

   Reply by Bad Spleen · Sep 2009 · Home› Technical Talk

   You can use two normal maps, and animate the transition between the two maps. This gives quite good effects, if possible, take a look at the T shirts in Fifa, or PES2010 as strong examples. -Adam

3. Re: Can normal map be used in animation?

   

   Reply by Martin Henriksson · Sep 2009 · Home› Technical Talk

   Crysis also had normal map blending for facial animation etc.

4. Re: Can normal map be used in animation?

   

   Reply by Yozora · Sep 2009 · Home› Technical Talk

   Are you using an world space, object space or a tangent space normal map? You should be using tangent space normal maps for meshes that deform. And the answer to the question is yes, normal maps can be used in animation.

5. Re: Can normal map be used in animation?

   

   Reply by pior · Sep 2009 · Home› Technical Talk

   This is a misconception here. Tangent space work for anim 'out of the box' with most nm shaders but object can work wery well too, provided you have an appropriate shader doing just that. Yup I believe that too Zac, and I am pretty sure Uncharted did that for cloth also.

6. Re: Can normal map be used in animation?

   

   Reply by EarthQuake · Sep 2009 · Home› Technical Talk

   Is it that heavy? From what i've been told the savings from not having to convert tangent space into world to render makes up for the slight cost of transforming the OS normals. Which means its pretty much a wash performance wise. Also not needing to store normals/binormals/tangents for the mesh gives a nice little memory…

7. Re: Can normal map be used in animation?

   

   Reply by Xoliul · Sep 2009 · Home› Technical Talk

   It's not like a shader that transforms your object space normals with your Bone transform matrix is common practice however. Plus it's a bit heavy on performance.

8. Re: Can normal map be used in animation?

   

   Reply by Gav · Sep 2009 · Home› Technical Talk

   We did normal map blending for cloth wrinkles on a title I worked on, it took some work but the results were kind of nice. Subtle, but it made a difference. I believe we created a regular normal map that had bigger volume wrinkles for the shirts and then a map that had tighter, sharper wrinkles caused from pulling and…

9. Re: Can normal map be used in animation?

   

   Reply by ZacD · Sep 2009 · Home› Technical Talk

   Also I believe MGS4 used a winkled and a relaxed face normal map in in certain areas it would fade between them depending on the facial expression.

10. Re: Can normal map be used in animation?

    

    Reply by guangh69 · Sep 2009 · Home› Technical Talk

    Thank you very much. I understand.