Is it possibale to do normal mapping with either mr for maya or maya native render? if so can some one direct me to the information?
What do you mean by "normal mapping"?
for use with bump mapping.
Normal Mapping is a relatively new process, developed primarily for use in gaming, for adding extra detail to low-resolution models.
In addition to height information (which a bump map stores), Normal Maps store "angle" information for the normals. Luminance information stores height, Color information (RGB) stores the normal angles.
This gives the illusion of far more detail in the model. Also, the majority of such details can be seen from a profile (the lack of which is one of the largest drawbacks of standard bump mapping).
XSI and the new 3DS Max now have normal mapping built-in, though Maya still lags behind. There are, however, plug-ins to use Normal Maps with both Maya Software and Mental Ray for Maya renderers.
Here is one link for doing normal mapping with Maya:
http://www.drone.org/tutorials/normal_maps.htmlhttp://www.drone.org/tutorials/normal\_maps.html
and Mental Ray for Maya:
http://www.drone.org/tutorials/displacement_maps_mental.htmlhttp://www.drone.org/tutorials/displacement\_maps\_mental.html
I hope that helps.
-Steve
Total crap, maya has had the ability to make normalmaps since version 1. How the hell do you think it works? (by the way normal mapping has been around well since beyond maya, for some reason no one wanted to use it untill game developpers stared to do so, because it was easier to wrok in other ways, besides a lot of procedural shaders even in maya llready normalmaped themseves for ages, but they didnt invent it)
Only your talking about hires to lowres map transfer even that is possible and ive used it somewhere in 97 to do certain intricate stuff...
After all the normal camera imput is realy only a normal map and the bumpnode converts local camera normal axis form change to anormal map... Wich menas you can actualy sample a 2048 map and make it to a 1024 map quite easily based on BUMP data alone
But heres a few things you can do
A) read that info to acolor channel easy just connet the output to color.
read the normal info of one more complex surface awith equal uv paraietrisation and trasfer the info thatway. very simple-
C) or use raytracing like in the examle to obtain the normal direction point normal for a Better map manipulation when you can do in many directions. Not herd this either.
D) use a position coorespeondence normal to obtain truedisplacement like C but without raytracing. But it differs in result a bit. More usefull for displacement than normalmapping.
The only problem is to map it back efficently. Thats why i asked for MORE info in the other thread about what he wanted to USE the normal maps for. Because there are atleast 7 radicaly different ways to achieve or use normalmaps in maya. And most other 3d software too.
Se the output map can be in different vectorspaces too, one wich is normalized in worldspace, one wich is in cameraspace and the best one wich is in the llowres surfaces normalspace.
The fact thet theres no pushbutton tool to do it deosent mean it cant be done with teh standard tools in no time. Only the problem with that is taht why implement something thats there allready and might be wanted to be modified.
Dude, calm down.
Obviously not everyone in this world is as much of an unchallenged genius as you are.
The "push button" method is what has gained ridiculous amounts of popularity in the public consciousness in the past few months (with Half Life 2 and others using Normal Mapping).
My point was that XSI and 3DS Max have quick and easy "push button" methods and Maya does not. Maya is supposed to be about intuitiveness, not about complex solutions.
"Most Advanced Yet Accessible"
The entire Maya philosophy is based upon ease of use to bring these complex situations into the realm of "push button" use for people who are more artists and less technicians.
So, before railing into someone's response, please stop for a moment and think that not everyone wants to dissect existing tools to find an answer. Many (and, in fact, most) people just want to do something with what you call a "push button."
It might seem idiotic to you, but there are those who don't want the technology to get in the way of their art.
-Steve
Im NOT much better than you are but i follow the tech specs. Its supprising how something mudane suddenly comes all the rage whan someone make s a push button solution for something thats old as a stone. Does not make it new. Sorry i meant to alleviate the posts tone tough.
there are push button solutions for maya too...
In all true fairness amking one is prtobably less work than one full day at the office? Again there are many ways to obtain normals and feed them back to maya.
Did it ever occour to you that at simplest making a normalmap in maya is just connecting the camera normal of samplerinfo to a surface shader attach it to the higress surface and convert to a file texture?
Oh sure youll want to normalize it to a other space but that is still a very elemantary normalmap (wich has been doable and makable for ages), wich works directly by connectingf to the bump camera normal of your material (without the bump node).
With a matrix few mults it works fine. Altough not teribly vell on deforming surfs wich needs a few more mults to make it a normalspace normal map. And not in floating point precision as maya does not support float maps (altough mentalray can do thsi for ya!)
So the question is still in the air WHAT kind of normal maps do you want to use?
PS that is by the way what failure asked i persume. Because theres no such thing as a NORMAL MAP, its a glob refeering to a method to obtain the local normal form a map ie a map of normals, but the methodology or use of it isnt a FIXED thing it depends on the use.
So you se as soon as you can define the ONE exact GLOBAL way for a normalmap to garb it and work ill do a pucsh button solution for you!
The way programs are being built nowadays is for ease of use and workflow. Going thru all that [censored] is a pain and I think that the "push button" methods are helping people to get their work done faster.
Why did man create a remote... laziness, and that's why tools like these are being bought out, workflow and flexibility [and the laziness in our world today]. 
Yes yes i can understand that but, making a single pushbutton solution LESSENS your options (and the cornerstone of maya design is that they do not dliberately hinder you form doing anything, they tried that and failed miserably). As i said i can do it for you as soon as you can agree on what it is your puhbutton solution needs.
Besides i dont exaclty call 8 clicks very hard (to script to a button even)! besides wth understanding these 8 steps you can device as complex pipes as you ever want that suit YOUR needs better than basic script form someone else.
Forget i said anything about puhsbuttons and so on. I just understand how it works thats all.. Unfortunately you seem to think normal mapping iso ONE function while in truuth ist is a own area of development.
so do you want? pick one!
A) bumpmap to normalmap converter hires to normalmap converter with uv dependency
C) Hires to lores normalmap with ratraced normal intersection normalmap
D) hires lowres normal differencce normalmap
then answer me what format you need it to be? Mainly for maya use or for export to games, if games then you need the specs for how your games eingene wants this. If for maya use then understand that maya allready has this capability allways has jsut map a texture to the normal camera plug of your shader.
Ok so youll need a utility for that linkage, so how dyou you want the normal info stored? worldspace or localspace or surfacespace.
Mind you theese are all NORMAL maps, infact the 2 game eingenes i know how to operate use different kinds of normalmaps!
I cant begin to help you untill you specify what you expect of a normalmap!
PS. its like you wanted a piece of clothing but didnt specify the type ypu need! Does he want shoes, or a blouse?
From the tone of original question I assume that poster wants to extract normal maps from maya's models for a realtime app i.e. game - as already said realtime bump mapping is kind of a buzzword/hot
issue these days.
Anyway, obtaining normal map from maya is generally trivial. If you have a knowledge to put a texture on object you'll know how to make rgb encoded normal map.
Problem, however is that most hardware bumpmap algos require normal maps to be defined in the surface tangentnial space ( that's because that way bump can be claculated efficiently within hardware )
Now, tangential space is not defined at all for polygonal geometry - which is sadly the only type of geometry hardware can use.
So, in order to make such normal maps we need to "make up" some kind of tangential space on existing poly model. This is not trivial task since this "virtual" tangential space is highly dependent on poly mesh topolgy. There is no standardized or "best" way to do it yet, we don't heve a nice algo, at least not acessible to wide public. Solution to this problem cannot be easily made into general push button solution.
One possible way to have nice tangential space is to model in nurbs, convert to polys and use tangential space of nurbs. Nurbs have very well defined tangential space - they are parametric 3d function plots after all. That's most probably how today's games are doing it.
you can use the low polys normal data as tangential space! and uv cords as the axes for that space thats what the game eingenes use, and maya can do it too.
But thet still
Ok so i gather no one is truly interested in a normal map pushbutton genereate utility then? Because no one has imput on how they would want the normals to be transfered form hires to lowres? or perhaps you just want bump converted to normalmaps?
It's not a 100% "pushbutton" solution, but Maya 6.0 comes with the "TransferSurfaceInfo" plugin. It enables the "Transfer Surface Info" option under the "Lighting/Shading" menu, which gives you a number of ways to generate normal maps by comparing hi-rez and lo-rez geo. The shader it generates is made for realtime / veiwport usage. So if you want to use it for MR, you'll need to create a custom shading network, with a camera input, and a bunch of dotProduct nodes. My matrix math is severely lacking, so I just copied a network from here:
http://www.headus.com/au/samples/norm-MR/
and altered it to work with the maya generated maps. I believe I had to reverse one of the channels and perhaps swap R and G. I don't remember, as I built an MR phenemenon to handle it, so it is pretty much push button for us.
Also, I beileve someone previously stated that normal maps use Luminence for height, and color for angle? My tests with Maya generated normal maps have R and G handling angle (you only need two angles, as you can only rotate the normal in U and V space, not XYZ) and B as the height data (I believe based at 0.5 to both push and pull the surface).
Have fun. A little trial and error should get you far.
Yes i know that. But theres still many ways to skin the fish.
Well maya has many ways for doing this. But their point was that they want it scripted and they dont want to build networks at all... Thats the point of a pushbutton solution.
What i was saying was that networks are inhetritly better but if they want t o stupidify themselves so be it. Its so hard to buld networks, after all a artist doesnt need to know what hees doing yeah right
I mean i can generate this and many other methods I only want to know wich one they consider TRUE normalmapping (wich is offcourse all of them!) bacuse a push button solution can only do one of them.
Normalmapping is not a single method but a idea that things can be trasfered form other things into more convienient calculation packages. As such normalmaps are a realm of development of their own. Theres a lot you can do with them, and thatmeans theres never going to be one true way of generating them. As said theres many ways to skin a fish.
Hell i generate normalmaps out of pointcloud data allmost daily.
Normal map creation is fairly straightforward with maya 6's transfer surface information but i dont use it. There is still no info in maya help as far as rendering with your normal maps, only in using hardware cgfx, which is a little weak.
I make my low poly in maya, then use zbrush for high poly creation as well as tangeant space normal and displacement map generation. Then turn original low poly mesh into subd surface and apply displacement.
I dont know how to apply my generated tangeant space normal map onto models to be rendered with mental ray, can anyone help with how to set up a shader network for this? thanks
also i found this
http://www.headus.com/au/samples/norm-MR/
its a nice network for using tangent normal maps with mental ray however the shading network never works when i export it, anyone know how to do it right?
-def
What exactly odes not work, whats the error it reports or is the rersult not what you expect! And what version of maya are you running!?
hey Joojaa, i have to first say thanks cause you've helped me solve problems in the past and im appreciative of that, thank you for the great advise.
But i have to say you seem to be awefully combatative when it comes to normal maps in mental ray for maya. It seems very obvious to me that they are very poorly supported, it only takes a simple search for the words "normal map" in maya 6 (which i am using) to prove this. THere is NO reference in maya as to how to use normal maps (tangent, object, world, or otherwise)at all. It really should be as easy as applying any other map. I understand that you know how to do a lot but most artists do really just want something that works. So to repeat myself, i have a tangent space normal map to be applied to a poly mesh. Maya does not have any documentation describing how to make a tangent normal map render properly with the mental ray renderer and i was wondering if anyone had a shader network to make this happen. To put it simply id like to see if someone has a shader network to make a tangent space normal map to render correctly in maya v6 mental ray.
I thought i asked my questions very clearly in my last post, as did other people, maybe if these questions are too stupid for you you could just leave them alone, rather than pontificating and acting like all our questions are stupid. thanks
You can't extract tangent space normal maps from poly geometry using shading network only.
Read my previous post.
If you understand what normal map is then it's trivial to apply it.
Saying that there is no support for normal mapping is like saying there is no support for fresnel reflection.
I was merely asking help in solcivng your problem, the network works fine for me so i dnot se why it shouldnt work for you, i merely asked questions to find if thers something i fail to se (susch as teh fact taht the network doesnet seem to work in maya 5)
On manuals why the hell do you guys seem to think manuals should be about specific issues, i mean theres nothing in the manual about lipsych or using blendshapes tied to bones to counter bad deformation. Yet thats what you do in reality.
Imagine a manual for a hammer, a hammer is as simple as tools go, yet theres a million thing syou can do with that. Try doncumenting all you can do with a average hammer, youll pretty soon notice the list IS very very very long. Now take maya that in this context is a tool too but maya is infinitely more complex than a hammer so to say that the list for what may acan and cant do is much much longer.
So a manual is better suited as a sdescription on how things work as ooposed to having specific solutions. And the matter of fact is that maya is more than max for example geared towards flexibility rather than rigdity in solutionthat is one of the greatest flaws i se in max for example.
Ive doen a multiple lines of questions but no one bothers to answer them, maybe im failing to convey the message across?
My point about normalmaps
Please read and understand. a normalmap is a vectorfield nothing else, the actual term normalmap seems to meean a transfer form higher poly object to lower one for most of you, BUT thats not what it stands for, it is merely a commentary what the file itself contains, not how its obtained.
As this is the definition and theres no standard to and how this normaldata is to be attained, infact it can be done in many ways. Wether ist handpainted or converted from a bumpmap, or a highress modell (and then too how you want the vectorfield to be retrieved is still open). Also theres no standard to how the data is stored either.
What maya however wants when its talking about a normalmap is the normals in cameraspace. So if your object contains a normal data in some other space such as in the example it needs to be converted to normalspace first.
BUT as stated before theres no standard to how the data should be represented in the file, so a map thats eported out of a nother program like zbrush might be in different order or encoding so the network must reflect that.