Normal maps look fine in everything except 7.01 wth

#1

Ultimapper is either no longer working or it crashes. When it doesn’t crash it generates nothing. So I’m using xnormal now to generate the normal maps. They look fine in the previews. Then it looks like garbage when I bring it in xsi. I use a normal map node in the render tree, I play with tangents I place with color vertices, still looks wrong. Where there should be rises it dips and when it should dip it rises, it’s almost like it’s backwards. Tried a normal mapping compound that is supposed to fix this problem. It’s an improvement but it still isn’t right. I even rendered it in c4d looked fine. I’d drop the issue if I wasn’t stuck animating this stuff in xsi.

Is there a way to make normal maps look, you know, normal like in everything else.

#2

It almost sounds like you need to invert the green channel. There’s a setting in xNormal for baking out your normal maps where you can set the Y channel to be either +Y or -Y.

#3

Thank you for the quick reply.

I tried what you said… It changed the look somewhat… But it still looks wrong in xsi… Left xsi… Right xnormal preview… :shrug:

#4

Have you tried un-checking the Unbiased Tangents option at the bottom of the normal map ppg?

I know this sounds simple…but it was added in the 7 cycle to the best of my knowledge and is “on” by default. I had things coming over from 3D Coat and looking odd until i unchecked the feature.

#5

Did you find a solution to your problem? I think it’s helpful for those searching for a solution to be able to look through a thread and see if something had a solution or not.

Please share!

#6

I played with the +y -y. It changed the look but it didn’t seem like an improvement. Found problems in other places that are a bit worse. Like the drill bit…

      Not a very good comparison..but oh well...
      
      xsi........
       
       
      c4d
       
  
   If giving up is a solution. Then yeah... I found a solution....
#7

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