Hi all,

Anybody have problems with normal maps on proxies not rendering correctly?

Workflow and issue:
I made a primitive sphere in Max, UV unwrapped it, saved as an .obj, took that into Mudbox and subdivided and sculpted it. Then in Mudbox, exported the object at a higher poly count than the original in Max, but lower than the max poly level in Mudbox. To keep the sculpted detail from Mudbox I also exported normal bump bitmaps from Mudbox, created in tangent space. No problems yet as I’ve done this before.

Back in Max, I imported the higher res poly .obj, then re-applied the UV unwrap modifier, then saved this out as a mrproxy. Then, to the mrproxy, I applied a material with the normal bump bitmaps and additional grayscale bump bitmaps. The normal bump bitmaps are the “purpley” bitmaps from Mudbox, adjusted to gamma 1.0, and inserted into the normal bump map (then into the regular material bump slot). All should be good, right?

However, the normal bump bitmap IS NOT DOING ANYTHING IN RENDERINGS in regular tangent space. I’ve tried flipping red, green, swapping them, trying the different screen and world space coordinates (which themselves just give messed-up results, but world is the closest to what should actually be). Nothing renders correctly. The normal bump bitmap renders the same as if the entire normal map was un-activated in the base material. Yet the additional grayscale bump does show up if it is checked on within the normal bump slot.

The thing is, I also painted diffuse maps in Mudbox, saved those out, and successfully reapplied them to the mrproxy. The diffuse maps use the same UV unwrap coordinates as the normal bump bitmaps do. This is why I don’t know what’s going on. I also tried defining the normal bump bitmaps as gamma 2.2 but nothing changes.

Is this a 2012 issue? Is this a mrproxy issue?

Thanks