Nobiax's Textures in 3Delight.
wancow
Posts: 2,708
Okay, this guy Nobiax http://nobiax.deviantart.com and http://www.sharecg.com/yughues has these amazing tileable texture sets, which I've had some before, but I've found so many amazing ones, that I'm sort of raping his ShareCG account as I write this, and converting the TGA files to PNG (using XNView).
Anyway, in each of his sets he has this file in his texture sets called "NORMAL.tga" which basically looks like a blue bump map. So, two questions:
What is the function: is it a bump map?
And next: how best to use it in DS/3Delight?
Should I convert it to gray scale?
Oh... that's three questions, huh... must learn to count...
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Comments
I think it has something to do with making low poly objects look more detailed, someting about "Normal Mapping" functions alot like a bump map, if you look at the DAZ default shader under surfaces you'll see something called "Normal Map" were you can plug in an image file.
Normals are the direction that a particular polygon or tri is facing. So in essence, normal maps are bsaically a special kind of bump map. Unlike regular bump maps which only work in one direction (away from the facing poly), normal maps work as their name implies by assigning a normal to a pixel, meaning you can have light bouncing in multiple directions from a single polygon. Essentially, this gives the illusion that the surface is far more detailed than it actually is.
I often export meshes from Daz Studio to create my own normal maps in 3DS Max when I'm working with Luxrender. It gives far superior results to bump maps if used well..
Bump, displacement and normal maps are all used to add more detail or refine existing detail.
Think of normal maps as bump maps on steroids. The both do, basically, the same thing...but as HoF said normal maps do it in '3d space'.
Does anyone know how to make use of them in 3Delight?
Normal maps can be used if you apply UberSurface to an object, there is a specific parameter for it in the shader surface tab.
As Cipher said, UberSurface can use them. The Daz default shaders cannot though. If you have Reality and Lux then you can load in a normal map under Modifiers. Just ensure you check the "normal map" box. If the extension ends in 'NRM' (something I've made a habit of doing), Reality does this for you, which is handy.
if the DAZ default shader can't do Normal mapping then why is this here?
Umm....why are you spending the time converting the image files?
DS can use tga images, no problem...
And here's a quickie fully textured (just a plane and a cylinder, with a single distant light)
And yes, the DAZ Default shader supports normal maps just fine.
Learn something new every day. I wonder how I missed that though o.O
Note that there are at least two "spaces" in which normal maps are made, and IIRC DS only supports one of those.
One feature with normal maps is that they actually change the surface, you can make an normal map of something an scar and it could poke through thigh clothing.
We've been able to use normal maps since DS3, only problem was that like bump & disp it wasn't linked to the tiler, thankfully it is in DS4.