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[Solved] Smart materials / normal map for textures


zayca
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I am new to 3DC so please take it into account. I have already discussed the matter on Discord but it is still something which bothers me.

My goal was to create a smart material simply based on some downloaded textures which I have.  So, I assumed that, like in other other software it is all about plugging all standard maps: diffuse, normal (!) and roughness into slots. But it seems that there is no slot for Normal map. It is for displacement but it is something different like we know.  I check some threads and I ask in Discord and it seems that it is not possible to use a normal map for smart material? 

Really? Normal map seems, for me at least, something essential in texturing so it is hard to believe that it does't  work here. I guess that every texture has a normal map and it should be used to get nice effect

I checked all default smart materials and non of them uses normal map. 

I found an option to import texture with its maps (texture -> import)  but it's useless as it cannot be conveniently painted  with smart material painting and it is just applied on uv space. 

 

 

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Thank You for the link. I will check it for sure. 
 

But WHY 3D(!) software like 3DC has no real and working input for normal map for smart material? Isn’t it like standarized essential for any 3d software? 
It is software for „easy” texturing! 

If I plug converted to grayscale normal map into displacement slot then where I should plug diaplacement map? 
 

 

Edited by zayca
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Because Normal maps only work best when tiled across 3D models that have a uniform direction in tangent space, like terrains or walls.

Create new layers at Smart Material Editor to add more textures and blend it.

//edit

Solved on version 2021

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Normal map doesn't work well in 3Dcoat smart material but this is fine using a height map.

This is confusing because the icon for depth on smart material editor is blue/purple and because every other texturing software use normal map. 

i think the tooltip should mention that the slot is not made for normal map.

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  • Carlosan changed the title to [Solved] Smart materials / normal map for textures
  • 1 year later...
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On 1/17/2021 at 1:50 PM, Carlosan said:

Because Normal maps only work best when tiled across 3D models that have a uniform direction in tangent space, like terrains or walls.

Hey @Carlosan, could you please elaborate a little on this? I have thousands of purchased PBR materials that I've used in other software which I'm now trying to use as smart materials. My diffuse/normal/height/roughness etc maps all map up to each-other and tile the same way. When I paint with them now though, I get none of the normal information I'd expect using any other texture painting software. I'm honestly confused by this, I've literally never seen a texture painting tool that doesn't allow normal maps to be painted. If I fire up ArmorPaint or Substance or anything else, I can choose the textures I want my PBR materials to sample from and paint across those channels on my model's textures, including normals.

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On 3/7/2021 at 1:05 PM, mattaudio said:

Normal map doesn't work well in 3Dcoat smart material but this is fine using a height map.

This is confusing because the icon for depth on smart material editor is blue/purple and because every other texturing software use normal map. 

i think the tooltip should mention that the slot is not made for normal map.

Why do you say it doesn't work well? It is sampled from the texture maps the same way colour and other texture information is sampled. The height maps have different detail than the normal maps. The height maps could have larger details while the normal maps have smaller details, this is why both of them exist.

image.thumb.png.d9f6b2d1f3161fb1c415cdcfb57c7047.png

 

Just want to add something to this, take a look at the details in the height/depth map and the normal maps I've attached for this particular PBR material. Notice the detail difference between the normal map and height map. This is because normal maps are used for capturing much finer detail for directions at each fragment that would be far more expensive to represent using actual 3D geometry. Height maps are used to displace 3D vertices to add actual geometry to materials that have the topology to support it. In most cases, games don't even use height maps for things other than landscape generation, they use normal maps since per-fragment lighting can be easily calculated in a shader in real time by sampling from a normal texture map.

space-cruiser-panels2_normal-ogl.thumb.png.2d88a4e81240cae5facc4d64d2ae4248.pngspace-cruiser-panels2_height.thumb.png.7b7b347fc67174d450e85b7e156db5d7.pngspace-cruiser-panels2_preview.thumb.jpg.916c019773827df550431db29e1fcf52.jpg

Edited by Hastouki
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