Quote - re bump & displacement..I dont buy any content but I'm pretty sure everyone uses bump maps these days,displacement seems to be getting wider useage also.
I've been using displacement in commercial models for a couple years now but one thing that drives me mad is the end user making a point of either turning it off..or not turning it on in render options.or not using the firefly engine.or even rendering in another app & not setting up displacement correctly.

you should include it though,when done right it's miles better than a regular bump map

 

Thanks for that note Stefan :)
I have all except you latest piece, but haven't used them in a while. Serves me well, had I used them, I'd know!!!  I'm sort of an architectural prop nut. (sorry... that was a suck-up moment)

Yes, I will definately include bump maps and displacement where I used them. To me, what I'm making just doesn't look right without them.

You brought up a good point, something I hadn't thought of. People not using firefly. (I just knew I had overlooked something!)

Hey, do I need to get your permission if I use any of your models as a backdrop in marketplace promo renders, with mention, of course? It's a wizard robe for Apollo Maximus I'm making, so some of your castle props may work really nice :)
Sorry guys, before I totally sidetrack this thread, there's more info here: http://www.contentparadise.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6151&page=44

Hey, Operaguy, that's looking very nice!

Normal maps aren't just for real time preview, you can use them in final renders (I've done it in other programs) and since they render faster than a displacement map would, you can get good details and shadows to match for mid-ground/background objects. A simple bump map wouldn't be able to give you proper shadows or look as good up close, a displacement map can take time to render, a normal map's a happy middle. At least, that's been my experience in the past.

Check out Kolby Jukes' Hulk images. They use normal maps. Believe me when I tell you a bump map alone wouldn't look as good...

http://kolbyjukes.com/?page_id=45

Thanks Connie. I will have more examples of this approach over the coming months.

:: og ::

From those images, looks like normal mapping may be the thing that could make the low poly figures and set pieces viable as background objects, finally...

. > Quote - From those images, looks like normal mapping may be the thing that could make the low poly figures and set pieces viable as background objects, finally...

Yep, and very nicely:

A. Original V3 head, 70,000 trianges
B. Low poly head, about 600 triangles
C. Low poly head with normals of A.

Now this example isn't perfect as i just did this in 20 mins and you can see some problems around the eyes and in the ears. But for a background character, it will probably work fine. And since its 1/100 the polygons of the full rez head, it renders in a flash. You can even see it in realtime in the viewports if you want.

Now if only they would give us the tools to do this sort of thing in poser as well.

. And what the normal map looks like.

Just to send the message home as to the value of a normal map, imagine a scene requiring dozens of characters in the background or midground of your image, all posed and requiring decent detail. You could use high poly models but that would either cut into your render time or limit the amount of figures you could have in scene. You could use displacement but that would likely cut into render time also with all the other bells and whistles on. The only other option then, to save some time in renders and get the number of figures you want in scene all at once, would be a normal map. Take a look at the low res version versus the normal mapped version. Take special note of the lighting changes in the colored pics. Notice how the light reacts to the normal map? That's not something you'd get bump maps to do (or not well anyway). So it's a really handy option  - again, option - to have available for the times when you need it.

These aren't Poser renders but imagine what a Poser render would look like with the fast scatter or AO on top of a low res normal mapped character. Done well, it could rival the high res versions.

Also, there's two different types of normal maps. Tangent and Object (or World) based maps. World based maps are better for objects that don't do a lot of moving, as I understand it. While Tangent based maps are better for characters and the like.

what renders faster? normal map or bump map? 

I'd say they render about the same speed.

so if  i want to make a normal map out of my bump map i would need the nvidia plug-in ? 

i agree with bagginsbill that with bump map you have more control since you can use nodes.
but i am readin on the internet that normal mapping is mroe accurate at the same time.

so if i make my custom map and i know the seetings would that mean that  its better to use normal maps?

There's no special settings needed really...at least, not for normal maps - for displacement, that's a different story.

attached is an image of my normal maps settings for a test I did today.

here's the before and after render with the normal map and "settings" shown.

I still don't get the point of normal maps versus bump maps.

Please don't compare them to displacement maps. I understand that normal maps are faster/cheaper than displacement maps and you give up the actual movement of the surface.

The same exact thing can be said of bump.

Please, somebody besides me, show a comparison of bump versus normal, like this image. (Click to enlarge)

The two balls on the left are bump mapped. The two on the right are normal mapped. (I got the bump and normal from Filter Forge)

The upper ones have 4 times the amount of bump than the lower ones. Notice that the normal map has gone screwy - you cannot manipulate the bump depth with a normal map. I said this in the beginning - normal maps are inferior because you have no control over the depth at render time.

To my eye, as well, between the bottom balls, the bump-mapped one looks better. It tolerates the texture filtering whereas the normal map doesn't do so well. (Texture filtering results in de-normalized vectors.) If you turn off texture filtering, you get total crap with fine lines like these.

As for performance, I ran this render over and over with 4 threads (one in each quadrant) and the bump map balls finished way before the normal mapped balls.

Does anybody actually have data and renders to back up the claims that normal maps are better quality, give more control, and are faster to render? Because my experience is that bump maps are the winner in all three categories.

By the way, there is a non-standard issue around normal maps. Some place the y-component positive is up, others down. For Poser, I had to invert the green component to get it to render correctly. Thank goodness for nodes.

Well, I don't claim to be an expert on this and I'm quite sure you're a bit more up on this side of things than I (I'm just a modeler afterall). I can only refer you to the various things I've seen on the net and the trend in gaming towards it over classic bump mapping. 

A Bump Map only affects the “depth” - makes things look like they stand out from or recede into the surrounding area. Normal maps are a lot more complex because they contain actual spatial coordinates.

Is it better outright than a bump map? It has it's positives and its negatives so I'd say no and yes. Is it good that the option exists and people are interested in supporting it? Yes. I think it is.

"Bump or displacement maps require a specification of the world unit dimension indicated by the map intensity. (In other words, the height displacement between the maximum and minimum values of a bump map must be specified in world coordinates such as inches, and this must be done for every bump map.) This may require adjustments when transferring such maps from on program to another. This is not necessary for normal maps, since they do not refer to absolute world distances.

Because the normal at each pixel in a normal map is completely independent from its neighboring normals, normal maps can produce effects not possible with bump maps, while still being able to do everything that can be done with bump maps.

On the other hand, bump maps can be created (somewhat) easily by hand using a 2D paint application, which is not case with normal maps. (See below.) You will find each useful in your creations, depending on requirements. "
source:http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Normal_Maps - additional links on page for more information.

souce : http://developer.nvidia.com/object/real-time-normal-map-dxt-compression.html

"Bump mapping uses a texture to perturb the surface normal to give objects a more geometrically complex appearance without increasing the number of geometric primitives. Bump mapping, as originally described by Blinn [1], uses the gradient of a bump map heightfield to perturb the interpolated surface normal in the direction of the surface derivatives (tangent vectors), before calculating the illumination of the surface. By changing the surface normal, the surface is lit as if it has more detail, and as a result is also perceived to have more detail than the geometric primitives used to describe the surface.

Normal mapping is an application of bump mapping, and was introduced by Peercy et al. [2]. While bump mapping perturbs the existing surface normals of an object, normal mapping replaces the normals entirely. A normal map is a texture that stores normals. These normals are usually stored as unit-length vectors with three components: X, Y and Z. Normal mapping has significant performance benefits over bump mapping, in that far fewer operations are required to calculate the surface lighting. "

 It's just another option - not a useless one either - it's not the be-all-and-end-all by any means   but it's cool to have the option, no?

"Because the normal at each pixel in a normal map is completely independent from its neighboring normals, normal maps can produce effects not possible with bump maps, while still being able to do everything that can be done with bump maps."

Agreed, and this is also why the above pix is an 'Apples and Oranges' comparison anyway... Normal maps work best when they are extracted from high rez meshes and used to duplicate that detail on low rez ones. For this, they are far superior to bumps as bumps are limited to small perturbations of existing surface normals only. You can't, for example, take the normals of a sphere and put them on a cube with bumps, whereas this is perfectly possible with normal maps. And normal maps are indeed faster as they only involve simple addition of vectors, while bump maps require a differentiation which is a much more expensive calculation. But of course this is poser, so god only knows what the heck is being done to them to make them slow like that.

Also note that while you can't increase the depth of a normal map, you can reduce it by weighting against a neutral vector. But generally it is better to make your changes to the sculpt itself, cause this way all you other maps remain consistent.

this doesnt work for alternate diffuse?

yeah looks like gradient bump doesnt work with alternate diffuse. so i can not use the GC shade.r
bravo poser....bravo.

OMG, you're right. The Specular node totally ignores the normal map. The Diffuse node works, but not the Specular.

PS: Just tested the other specular nodes. None of them work.

Hahah. OMG. Reflection doesn't work either.

This is terrible.

So reflection, and specular don't even work if you are using normal maps?

BB if you don't file a gleeful bug report, I'm gonna thwap you!

thats a disaster.