Hi Ville / Matthias,
I sent this mail a while back, but I think the list may not have been working.
MATTHIAS: With the recent mail you sent - are you talking of adding
Normal Maps and the like to a low poly mesh in RS? Am i on the right
track below or not?
I recently was experimenting with something similar between RS --
Blender and back. Blender also has sculpt tools similar to ZBrush [
Big difference - Blender is FREE ]. I was attempting to export an OBJ
from RS, into Blender, Sculpt it, create a Normal Map of the Sculpted
mesh from a Low and High rez mesh inside XNORMAL [
www.xnormal.net ]. Then apply this Normal map to the lo-rez mesh in
RS From what I gather RS has difficulty with actual large poly
meshes, the type required for sculpting. So - to get over this, one
might try NORMAL MAPS [ another phrase to look at is tangent space ].
Here is some mails I got from VESA re same:
================
Regarding normal mapping: there are no big secrets involved, you
simply assign a texture map to the surface normal. If the normal map
comes from another application, one probably has to shift pixel
values around zero:
surface properties
bump normal = texture(map coords) // Assign the normal map
bump normal -= constant (0.5, 0.5, 0.5) // shift from 0 .. 1
to -0.5 .. +0.5
In the last VSL object, VSL editor / General tab / Normalize option
should be set so that the surface normal gets again unit length.
===============
AND ALSO THIS: Thanks to Timo for this observation at the IRC:
==============
<timo2> or more like you have to change the normal information
_from_ tangent space to world space before you assign it
<timo2> and you need uv-coords for it to work
So their now, you have been told :)
Any wisdom on that?
Yes, there is :) My brief example was indeed for a fixed space normal
map, not for tangent space mapping. I'll consider this - maybe a new
VSL operation 'map to normal space' is required. Of course, U and V
directions are not available for all object types (analytics,
metaballs etc), but that's really not a problem because normal
mapping is mostly related to polygonal or SDS objects.
=============
REGARDING A MESH I SENT VESA WHEN ATTEMPTING NORMAL MAPPING to RS:
==================
Thanks! I tried it and found already the first obstacle. .obj import
reads the required UV data as a 'face material' , which is not
suitable for bump mapping. Interpolation is so discontinuous that
face boundaries show up - I guess that was the rpoblem in the test
image you sent me.
I manually created a UV set and assigned the height map using it. The
result was then OK. So, either .obj import needs the UV set option,
or we have to create a simple tool, which converts a face material to
a uv set. We will add it as soon as possible (probably into the first
SP release for v6 - we will not delay the actual V6 release any more
because of new development).
================
Hope this lot is of help to you,
Aidan
At 16:24 30/07/2007, you wrote:
Hi!
Does anyone use Zbrush and RS? I cannot export OBJ objects properly
with UV-textures.
I can export displacement mapping and OBJ-object, but when I
try map disp. map in Realsoft
mapping is aligned wrong. Is there any tutorials for exporting
models and disp.map into RS?
Ville
