Anim8or Community

General Category => General Anim8or Forum => Topic started by: FWL on February 12, 2020, 12:46:09 pm

Title: Bump maps and shading preferences
Post by: FWL on February 12, 2020, 12:46:09 pm

Hello everyone,

I'm new to the forum and fairly new to 3d modelling. I've started to go through an old tutorial (made for maya but still useful) to explore anim8or and really like it but there are a few things i ran into:

1. bump maps vs normal maps. On my computer bump maps do show up in the workspace but normal maps only show after rendering. Is this how anim8or works or is this related to my hardware setup or an anim8or setting. Choosing a different shader (GLSL, ARB or Opengl) doesn't make a difference (see also second question)

2. Bump maps do show up in the workspace when i choose ARB as shader. But then I have no lights preview in the scene environment. If I choose GLSL I do have lights but lose the bumpmaps. Is this also hardware/driver related?

3. I keep getting an error logging in on this forum which says I am banned because there where to many accounts on my IP-adress. Am I doing something wrong or is this site-related?


Thanks in advance for your help!


My laptop specs are:
Intel core i7
Intel UHD Graphics 620
NVIDIA GEforce MX150
8GB RAM

Title: Re: Bump maps and shading preferences
Post by: Steve on February 12, 2020, 03:04:53 pm

Normal maps should work with GLSL shaders on your graphics card. Make sure that the NVIDIA graphics is being used. I've attached a small project with an example.

Just to be sure, what version of Anim8or are you using?

Title: Re: Bump maps and shading preferences
Post by: Steve on February 12, 2020, 03:23:34 pm

And here's a project with bumpmaps. They should work in both ARB and GLSL shaders.

Title: Re: Bump maps and shading preferences
Post by: FWL on February 12, 2020, 04:36:28 pm

Hello Steve!

Thanks for the quick response! I feel kind of stupid now. The NVIDIA-card wasn't selected as default graphic card on my system. I just assumed because its in there it would automatically be the default. Everything works great now just as you described and I can see the bump map and the normal map in all the environments.

Thanks again and good evening!

FWL

Title: Re: Bump maps and shading preferences
Post by: FWL on February 12, 2020, 04:39:30 pm

Oh I forgot, does it really matter CPU/memory-wise if you use the bump maps or normal maps? Or are there other reasons to choose one over the other?

Greetings,

FWL

Title: Re: Bump maps and shading preferences
Post by: selden on February 13, 2020, 03:19:19 pm

Normal maps usually are more precise, although bumpmaps are easier to understand. Traditionally, bumpmaps could use only 8 bits of resolution (i.e. a total of 256 different height levels, although 16 bits usually are possible these days) while normal maps provide 8 bits in each of two different directions.

Unfortunately, I don't see any mention in the Anim8or documentation ( http://www.anim8or.com/learn/pdf/anim8or_manual_v100_da.pdf ) of Anim8or's bumpmap resolution. Hopefully I've overlooked it or Steve can provide some clarification.

Title: Re: Bump maps and shading preferences
Post by: FWL on February 14, 2020, 05:56:32 am

Thanks for your response, Selden!

I will try them both and see what fits my needs the best.

Title: Re: Bump maps and shading preferences
Post by: Steve on February 15, 2020, 05:37:37 am

seldon is right. Bumpmaps and normal maps both have a precision of 8 bits. The derivative is computed based on a single value for bumpmaps while normal maps have 3 8 bit components that represent the derivative so are normally more accurate.

Note: It's possible to use higher resolution 16b or even 16b or 32b floating point bump and normal maps on GPUs but if the input image is only 8b then it wouldn't help. Currently Anim8or doesn't support fp textures because there are few texture maps in fp format.

FWL That's one reason why GPUs are better that built-in Intel graphics ;)