I’m having a first look at creating a normal map for a character model and came across the ‘Crazy Bump’ program which is really good.

The issue I’m having now is that when I go ahead and attach the normal map to my model and render it, it looks like there is some kind of a wood grain running all over the model..

I’ve attached a screenie showing what I mean, but as this is the first time I’ve tried doing this, I’m just after some help with why it looks so strange and what I should do to get it looking correct??

I’ve also attached the basic texture map I’m using and the resultant normal map in case that makes it more clear as to where I went wrong..

Cheers.

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don’t.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterization

You need to export your normal map in a higher bit-depth (16-bit or ideally 32-bit).

n8skow [FA]

Ah right.. I’ll give that a shot. Thanks for the input ;)

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don’t.

Hey,

After checking out my normal map, it seems it was already set at 32, but I re-saved it out as 32 in a couple of different formats with no luck.

Perhaps my shader connections are incorrect? To apply a normal map in Maya 2010, this is what I’m doing:

1. Created a Lambert shader and added in my texture from file using Maya’s GUI functions.
2. Attached the shader to my model (all is sweet at this point).
3. Double click on shader to bring up attributes again and in the ‘bump’ field add in the normal map in the same way as before using the Maya GUI.
4. It adds its connections in automatically for me.

I would assume that these would be correct, but if not… what changes would I need to make?

What else could be contributing to this strange effect when rendered?? (There’s a good chance it’s something stupid and obvious since this is the first time I’ve dabbled properly in this area.. I’ve seen it done quite a few times & know what is involved, but never added one to my own model until now).

Thanks for any help you can offer.

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don’t.

Do you have “"tiffFloatReader" loaded in the Maya plug-in manager?

n8skow [FA]

No I didn’t have it loaded. I tried it again with it on and off and there wasn’t really any notable change that I could see?

Here is a screenie of my hypershade window. Does it all look good?

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don’t.

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Shader network looks good…
are you able to post your scene files? hard to say what’s going on here…

n8skow [FA]

So I’ve been told that it might be to do with the topology combined with mesh smooth. Would you agree that mesh smooth needs relatively smooth and even topology to work?

I can’t see how this would be ideal since there will always be times where you need an edge loop closer together in some areas than in others..

Anyhow, thanks for your help. I’ll try another with more even topology and see how that goes.

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don’t.

If you’re just running your color/diffuse texture straight through crazybump, you’re not going to get ideal results. It is trying to pull height information out of the texture, which is going to create some weird normals (great for rocks and other kind of environmental details, not-so-great for your diffuse). I’d try painting out any flat or slightly gradiented areas (everything except the boot-laces, and perhaps the hair) before running it through crazybump.

See

Ah, you’re exactly right. That’s what I’ve done and that’s more than likely the reason for the shoddy bumping effect.

When you say ‘paint out’ - are you saying I should put a mask over the parts I don’t want bumped?

Thanks very much, that’s extremely helpful!

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don’t.

Yeah, just paint them out with a neutral gray color (usually 127,127,127 or 128,128,128) prior to using crazybump. Or you could just open the normal map itself and try painting out the areas with a 127,127,255 blue.

The texture itself is pretty flat enough that it shouldn’t be producing the normal map that it is, so it might even just be one of the sliders inside crazybump that is the culprit (fine/medium/large/etc detail). I’m not sure why it is so gradiented, as running the same diffuse texture through nvidia’s photoshop plugin or xnormal’s produces a cleaner normalmap.