- How to use crazy bump for second life objects how to#
- How to use crazy bump for second life objects 32 bit#
That whatever values are stored in the red, green and blue channels have been altered (by the sRGB profile) to something we don’t want. The thing to bare in mind there is that in order for this normal map to shade properly we need to explicitly tell Blender in the shader editor that this image should NOT be treated as a typical color image. If we leave that image node set to ‘color’ instead of ‘non-color’ then things definitely don’t look right as shown on the lower of the 2 examples in the image above. Luckily that’s pretty easy to do because in the image editor we have a pulldown menu that we can set to ‘non-color’. Which means that the image is not being treated as just data, so we need to counteract that.
Let’s ask ourselves, will this be plugged into any color sockets on our shader? The answer is – NO! So we need to remember this is ‘non-color’ data.įor an 8 bit image, Blender will probably default the color space here to ‘sRGB’. Notice in each of those editors we have the properties panel open (toggled with the ‘N’ shortcut key) and highlighted is where we can set the ‘color-space’ of the image. This is what the cube was using earlier to show the 8 bit texture problem. On top we have the image node selected in the shader editor and below the normal map texture being used in the image editor. Here in this next image you’ll see 2 editors on top of each other. PROBLEM 2: There are different ‘color spaces’ which can be set in different editors that we need to make sure we get right (again the default settings don’t help us here). Now we have the bit depth out of the way let’s move on to…
How to use crazy bump for second life objects 32 bit#
So in conclusion for proper versatility make sure we have that 32 bit float checkbox enabled for bump/normal maps! If on the other hand your material is actually quite rough and/or grungy often we can hide these banding artifacts on the normal map…Ībove is that same central cube from before but instead of a very low roughness setting of just 0.05 here we’re hiding a lot of the artifacts in the 8 bit image with a roughness value of 0.4 We are asking a lot of our textures here though seeing how the object is so clean, smooth, defined and shiny. Again we can see the ‘banding’ artifacts. On the left is the texture we’re using as a bump map for the plane in the viewport on the right. Here’s another example using an 8 bit bump map on a simple plane… Those artifacts aren’t there without the normal map (on the left) or on the high resolution mesh that was used to bake the normals from (on the right). Notice the strange swirly mosaic tiled look to the middle cube.
If we leave everything as is and bake with this default lower bit depth, we can get problems such as these… Here are our default new image settings below, notice the unchecked 32 bit float checkbox meaning our new image will be 8 bit. 8 bit images aren’t optimal for normal/bump images. PROBLEM 1: The default image settings i.e. So to immunise ourselves to all of this we’re going to hold these problems betwixt tweezers for inspection!
How to use crazy bump for second life objects how to#
That means it isn’t always immediately obvious what the problem with the bump/normal map might be, where the problem stems from or how to fix it. Well, actually in this context probably a mathematician could easily tell us BUT! The point is from an artist’s point of view there are some bumps to navigate so the process can be smoother (gotta love a 3D pun to get us started!)īEWARE! Before we let our guard down after some slick puns let’s not forget why we’re here! The dangers of bump/normal maps are that we don’t directly see them like we would a color map, instead we see more how the light bouncing off the surface has changed because of them.
Hi, Aidy Burrows here, bump map creation can itself be a bumpy ride and as for normal maps? Who can say what normal really is anyway?! If you happen to be new to the baking process in Blender see the end of the article (problem 5!) for tips on generating a simple normal/bump map from both a shader and another object.