wierd plateaus using normal maps..

system · April 12, 2012, 4:16pm

Anyone have any idea why this does this. It seems only to happen with normal maps. I have the map turned up a lot to emphasize, but i always have trouble with normal maps for this reason. Thanks.

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Zeddicus · April 12, 2012, 7:01pm

Looks like two problems. If this is a render in 3ds Max, turn the blur down as far as it will go in the material editor (0.01). That is how to avoid stair-stepping. The other issue looks to be UV related. I’m guessing you used one of the tiling options? These aren’t good for bump/displacement as there are way too many seams.

system · April 12, 2012, 9:33pm

Hey thanks for the input. I am working in Maya. The UV’s were laid out by hand inside maya, the model was transferred via GoZ. And then transferred back to maya the same way after the sculpting was finished. It was rendered with maya software. I am really confused.

… Ok so i took a moment and decided to render in Mental Ray. Everything seems to work fine. Now maybe you can explain to me why that makes a difference…

Zeddicus · April 15, 2012, 2:22am

I’m not familiar with Maya and this may sound obvious, but my best guess is that it has something to do with how the normal map is being handled. Based on past experience from reading forums, the most common causes for stair stepping tends to involve either incorrect creation/export settings, not enough data (8-bit versus 16-bit for example), and/or material based settings in the rendering app (Hypershade in your case, Material Editor for Max users like me where blur needs to be turned down as mentioned previously). If Mental Ray is rendering things correctly and the other is not, odds are good it will come down to a difference in how your map is being processed within Maya and doesn’t have anything to do with ZBrush at all. Wish I could help you more than that, but I’m not technical minded enough to understand what goes on under the hood (it’s all magic to me lol).

system · April 15, 2012, 7:50am

Zeddicus:

I’m not familiar with Maya and this may sound obvious, but my best guess is that it has something to do with how the normal map is being handled. Based on past experience from reading forums, the most common causes for stair stepping tends to involve either incorrect creation/export settings, not enough data (8-bit versus 16-bit for example), and/or material based settings in the rendering app (Hypershade in your case, Material Editor for Max users like me where blur needs to be turned down as mentioned previously). If Mental Ray is rendering things correctly and the other is not, odds are good it will come down to a difference in how your map is being processed within Maya and doesn’t have anything to do with ZBrush at all. Wish I could help you more than that, but I’m not technical minded enough to understand what goes on under the hood (it’s all magic to me lol).

The whole thing definitely can get way too complicated, I appreciate the ideas. They are definitely worth checking out and tinkering with, no doubt. I appreciate the input, I will definitely take a closer look at a few things. Thanks!