RE: Creating "THE" normal map...

[Michaël Bentitou <michaelb(at)hybride.com>]

Axel’s 4 Million brick reminded of something else… I had to generate some normal maps for a project a while back (it was also for brick walls ;-)), and back then only Xsi 4.2 was around so no Ultimapper…

 

I was using the D3 shaders – there’s a ‘generator’ node for creating normal maps… I remember it working really well, and it was pretty fast. Might want to try it out.

 

http://be3d.republika.pl/

 

-=mb.

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf Of Axel Akesson
Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 1:09 PM
To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: RE: Creating "THE" normal map...

 

I tried baking out Darktree (Simbiont XSI) bumpmaps with Color_Sampler in the Render Tree and I also tried rendermapping them... unfortunately I didnt have much luck. Baking out color darktrees worked fine though, as you would expect. Deadline constraints prohibited me from investigate further.

 

However, I used Ultimapper to generate normal, color and bump maps from a 4 million poly modeled brick wall to a grid recently. I have to say that it worked very nice. I did 4K images and it didnt take so long... maybe 15 minutes per texture.

13 hours for a 2K map sounds very very wrong.

 

Keep in mind, set the Ultimapper quality to the standard setting and the resolution to 256 x 256 when you are computing your Ultimapper and then set it to the resolution and quality you want when you GENERATE the maps. Otherwise the computation will take a looooong time.

 

Cheers,

Axel

 

---

From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf Of Steve Parish
Sent: 08 March 2006 17:36
To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: Re: Creating "THE" normal map...

Hi Michael,

We dont own Darktree :(

I was just using the free shaders to add some bump into a complex piece of geometry (so I didnt need to unwrap UV's) but would like to use unique UV's to bake out the bump for more efficient rendering.

Thanks
Steve


Michaël Bentitou wrote:

Hi Steve – Any reason why you can’t export your normal map directly from DarkTree ?

-=mb.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf Of Steve Parish
Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 11:27 AM
To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: Creating "THE" normal map...

I am having some difficulties in creating a good normal map. I was wondering if anyone had a good workflow that is quick!
I am basically trying to bake out some Darktree shaders so I can render it quickly and reliably.

The only succesful normal map I have made has been through the Ultimapper, but this is a ridiculously slow procedure (1 map at 2K has taken over 13hrs so far).
All rendermap efforts have failed except when it was on a perfect sphere (damn tests) and this seemed to be because the tangency looked correct, every other test applying tangency looks broken up..

I have been using the XSI Model Map to generate the normal maps and then piping it back using the normal map node... I generate a tangency too...  The result is a broken up jigsaw image... grrrr

Any suggestions?


Thanks

--

STEVE PARISH
3D GENERALIST
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