12/11/07

The anticipated upcoming release of Poser Pro (we don’t know when or at what upgrade price) advertises to include Normal Map support.

Could anyone explain what Normal Map support would mean for the Poser User? I have read through the Wikipedia article suggested by bagginsbill,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping

Apparently Normal Maps are most often used for real time rendering which is done in the computers hardware (video card). Could the Poser programming team possibly be planning to harness the of the systems video card?

Also Normal Maps seem to be used more for animation in video games, as they help reduce the memory overhead of figures with high polygon counts. Some of us don’t do animations, will Normal Maps be as useful for rendering single frames?

I would have loved to see some comments from Steve at E-F about this, but I think his blog is gone for good. CP-Starlet already has a Content Paradise blog up on the Smith Micro server where E-F and CP have moved their websites. If Steve was going to reopen his blog, it would have already been put back up.

LMK

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.

Normal mapping is mostly game technology.  It doesn't do anything that displacement mapping cannot also do, and Displacement mapping has the advantage of being able to actually raise or lower (i.e., displace) the geometry of the object whereas normal mapping cannot.  I don't see any situation where a normal map is more useful than displacement map, with the sole exception of speed at the expense of quality.

My Freebies

OOOoooOOO! I wonder if normal map support will be seen in the preview? if so, it might replace people using it over displacement maps.

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

Here's a secret. Normal maps are already supported and always have been. Load one and plug it into Gradient_Bump. Voila.

They are inferior to bump maps or displacement maps. But if that's what you have, use it now.

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

I'm not sure if inferior is the best term.

My understanding of normal maps, is they can deform an object in all 3 spacial directions (x,y,z), where as displacement maps only deform "up and down" from the mesh's normal facing.

I would call them different,  but not really inferior.

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

12/18/07

The Gradient_Bump channel does not have the same checkerboard artifact that is caused by the underlying mesh when a noise map is used on the Bump or Displacement channels. This artifact has been discussed before, and the Poser development team has never fixed this serious limitation.

Is there any reason why All three channels cannot be used? The article I read seemed to say that Normal Maps could add detail to low poly meshes, allowing more detail relative to less memory overhead.

The article also mentioned two types of Normal Maps, "object-space and tangent-space normal mapping." Which kind does (will) Poser use?

LMK

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.

Quote - My understanding of normal maps, is they can deform an object in all 3 spacial directions (x,y,z), where as displacement maps only deform "up and down" from the mesh's normal facing.

 

Normal maps produce a shading effect similar to bump map, but cannot alter the geometry in profile; i.e. they won't affect shadows and won't alter the edge of the model, pretty much like bump map.  Displacement mapping can do both of those.

edit: incidentally normal maps are pretty difficult to create in contrast to bump or displacement maps.

My Freebies

Actually, Normal maps can affect the shape of an object. Look at some of the normal map effects in Unreal Tournament 2007, and in second life.

Second Life uses them to deform simple prim (primitives) into amazing shapes. The same might be possible in Poser pro, and some thing cool, is that tecxtures can be animated, and that might open up a lot of interesting possibilities.

Much depends on how they are implimented though.

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

maybe it will mean that vickie 5 will be 5,000 polygons (instead of 500,000 polygons), as they can now use normal mapping in the preview to avoid having folks freak out when seeing a blocky low-poly video-game thing.

If they are incorporating state of the art game tech, using normal maps could be a great thing!

I'd love to be able to have some of the backgrounds or props that look killer, like in UT3, Bioshock or Crysis!

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

Quote - Second Life uses them to deform simple prim (primitives) into amazing shapes. The same might be possible in Poser pro, and some thing cool, is that tecxtures can be animated, and that might open up a lot of interesting possibilities.

SL just uses the wrong terminology. Those arent normal maps, but what is called vector displacement maps. Regular (scalar) displacement like that used in poser and most 3d apps only uses greyscale info to do the 'pushing' of geometry. It is always along one single direction, which is along the normals of the geometry. Vector displacement OTOH lets you specify not only the amount of 'push' but also the direction. Which is what lets you sculpt the object out of a primitive in second life (in a limited way of course)

Regular normal maps as used in games are just baked bump maps. ie a bump is done on a mesh and the resulting normals are stored in a file. This way in game, all you have to do is read the file to get the same effect and can avoid the costly calculations involved in doing bumps. Even in UT3, if you take a screencap and examine carefully at the edges of models you can see where the illusion fall apart. It's just very beautiful ZBrush work so you cant tell immediately.

Dunno which version Poser pro will support though as vector displacement requires some fancy rendering techniques. Would be nice if it did of course as you can do all kinds of cool things with it like scales and hair for example.

Quote - maybe it will mean that vickie 5 will be 5,000 polygons (instead of 500,000 polygons), as they can now use normal mapping in the preview to avoid having folks freak out when seeing a blocky low-poly video-game thing.

 

No: all objects will now be just be a simple cube and a normal map!

Mike

12/18/07

"is that textures can be animated"

Gareee:

??? I know that textured objects/figures/models can be animated, so I don't understand what you mean that with normals maps, textures can be animated. In what way does Poser not now animate textures?

ghonma:

If normal maps have no more information in them than regular greyscale bump maps, then why do they have three channels (RGB), such that "values of each channel (color) usually represent the xyz coordinates of the normal in the point corresponding to that texel"?

I hate to admit it, but I do not understand the term "baked," which I have seen several times lately.

If Second Life is using the wrong termonology for "vector displacement maps," might e-frontier be making the same mistake?

LMK

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.

Quote -
Vector displacement OTOH lets you specify not only the amount of 'push' but also the direction. Which is what lets you sculpt the object out of a primitive in second life (in a limited way of course)

Hmm. I have not seen the article but this sounds REALLY interesting!

Looks like you can define a morph in a bitmap, using one channel per direction (typically red=x, green = y, blue=z), and then you can:

1 - share morphs between geometries that have same UV mapping but different node order and arrangement.
2 - affect/mix morphs and vary their strength over the object using a shader tree.

In fact, it would be easy to generate such maps from existing geometry/morph definitions.

Hey I am looking forward to this new Poser Pro!

B.

*??? I know that textured objects/figures/models can be animated, so I don't understand what you mean that with normals maps, textures can be animated. In what way does Poser not now animate textures?

*in poser you can apply an animated texture (such as a video clip) to a model, so in theory, you could animate displacement or normal mapping.

Quote - 12/18/07

"is that textures can be animated"

Gareee:

??? I know that textured objects/figures/models can be animated, so I don't understand what you mean that with normals maps, textures can be animated. In what way does Poser not now animate textures?

ghonma:

If normal maps have no more information in them than regular greyscale bump maps, then why do they have three channels (RGB), such that "values of each channel (color) usually represent the xyz coordinates of the normal in the point corresponding to that texel"?

If Second Life is using the wrong termonology for "vector displacement maps," might e-frontier be making the same mistake?

LMK

 

What I mean, is normal maps can be used for animating. Imagine completly changing the shape of an existing object with a change of a map... not replacing it, swapping in one object for another, but completly changing the objects shape.

You could possibly also do a gradual dissolve from one shape to another, and since you can animate textures already, even the textureing could be changed easily on the fly in an animation.

Imagine a banana slowly changing into an orange as a simple example... not a 2d image replacement, but a full 3d conversion.

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

Quote - What I mean, is normal maps can be used for animating. Imagine completly changing the shape of an existing object with a change of a map... not replacing it, swapping in one object for another, but completly changing the objects shape.

You could possibly also do a gradual dissolve from one shape to another, and since you can animate textures already, even the textureing could be changed easily on the fly in an animation.

Imagine a banana slowly changing into an orange as a simple example... not a 2d image replacement, but a full 3d conversion.

 

I'd say, you could do it in Poser today. Looking at Baggins Bill's columns created from a cylinder
using displacement maps.
As you can animate almost any value in Poser's material room, it should be possible to change 
shapes using math nodes in the displacement channel.
 

Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present.

ghonma and pjz99 are right, there is some confusion between Normal maps and Vector displacement maps. modern Normal maps are simply a diffrent type of bump map, the big difference is that while bump maps give the illusion of pushing the surface out in only one direction, normal maps give the illusion of pushing the surface out in different directions, by controlling normal directions, giving a better illusion that the shape is changed than bump maps. but its still not adding any actual surface detail like Displacement or Vector Displacement maps do, so it looses the illusion along the edges of the object. Thats not saying that if done right it isn't a step up from standard bump maps. I tend to doubt though that poser is adding Vector displacement maps, if they were they would make a lot bigger deal about it, becouse even a lot of the high end suites dont have vector displacement yet.

Quote - Here's a secret. Normal maps are already supported and always have been. Load one and plug it into Gradient_Bump. Voila.
They are inferior to bump maps or displacement maps. But if that's what you have, use it now.

 

Yes, unfortunately I disagree with Baggins on this one. I think that normal maps are better, if not superior to bump maps. It's best to render side by side to tell the difference but I think for detailed work it's noticable.
Really I think it's best to use displacement and normal mapping together to capture the full effect.

Yes, it would be killer if Poser could adapt real time normal mapping in it's preview window, could be pretty tough for the little proggie to do though. We shall see.

Comitted to excellence through art.

12/18/07

"incidentally normal maps are pretty difficult to create in contrast to bump or displacement maps"

pjz99:

The link listed in the first message of this thread references an application, xNormal, a "free and very complete normal mapper by Santiago Orgaz,"

http://www.xnormal.net/

In another thread that touched on this subject, stonemason suggested a program, CrazyBump, which makes bump/displacement maps and normal mapes from greyscale images,

http://www.crazybump.com/

I have not yet tried either of these applications.

LMK

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.

a note - if you never take the time to actually work with normal maps and see what is involved in making them, it's hard to judge how good the results will be that come out of one of these auto-normalmap makers.  Not to say they are bad, but you simply must take some time and experiment with doing it by hand or you'll never really know whether it works the way you think it does.

My Freebies

Let me clarify.

A normal map defines a purturbation of the normal  - i.e. which way the surface faces. It records this information as a unit vector - which for purposes of storing as an image turns into RGB values.

But 256 levels is all you get for each, because each channel has only 8 bits. So you end up with vectors that are not perfect in the sense that magnitude is not always exactly one. Also, because the resulting normal depends non-linearly on the original dialed-in bump, you can't just willy nilly change the amount of bumpiness as easily as you can with a bump map.

In particular, I can disturb a bump map with other math functions, modulating it so that I can make it more or less in different areas (or at different times during an animation). This makes bump maps potentially much more flexible and dynamic than normal maps, which are essentially frozen-in-time snapshots of the resulting normal after applying a bump map.

So bump maps give me more control and I can generate them on the fly using math, giving very high resolution.

A normal map must be baked and stored in 8-bit-per-channel images. Not so good.

In other words, if normal maps are hard to make, cannot be dynamically changed using math/masks, and are limited in resolution, they are inferior to bump maps, IMO.

And BOTH are inferior to displacement, which as some have pointed out, I have used to create 3-D sculpted objects from otherwise featureless primitives. Vector displacement (where I could give the actual direction) would be even more sweet.

As far as I've been able to see (because I have it for Beta), Poser Pro doesn't have any of this, other than the Gradient Bump we've always had, which is a Normal map data interpreter. I don't remember what style it is. But somebody else posted a normal map built in some other tool used in Poser plugged into the Gradient bump channel. Try it.

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Quote -
Yes, it would be killer if Poser could adapt real time normal mapping in it's preview window,.

 

.. would it really?..initially I thought it pretty cool that Poser might have real-time bump effects,but that's purely from a gimmicky point of view,in practice I can't think of any good reason to have it,& I can't think of any occasion where a real-time bump preview would be of any benefit.sure it might look cool in the preview window but how often does one render using the preview engine?

I agree with Baggins..stick with greyscale bumps & displacement where you have much more control.

Cheers
Stefan

Cg Society Portfolio

12/19/07

stonemason:

Normal Maps are available in Poser on the Gradient_Bump channel. Does the gradient bump channel only render in the Preview Renderer, but not in FireFly?

LMK

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.

I believe he meant Open GL Preview.

yep,,'preview window' being the Open GL display

& I believe gradient bump works in both p4 renderer & firefly

Cg Society Portfolio

An example of displacement and how it can affect shadow...

My Freebies

Quote - Could anyone explain what Normal Map support would mean for the Poser User?

 

In a nutshell, Normal Mapping would replace Bump Mapping because it's higher detail and shows more depth than Bump Mapping can produce.  Most 3D apps now can export displacement textures as Normal Maps which can be imported to other 3D apps and applied to objects.  Displacement Mapping actually generates more polygons for its detail whereas Normal Mapping is still flat like Bump Mapping is.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

Quote - In other words, if normal maps are hard to make, cannot be dynamically changed using math/masks, and are limited in resolution, they are inferior to bump maps, IMO.

Well for modern renderers at least this is not a problem, because they support 32 bit per chan float precision in shaders. Even firefly renders internally in float format, it just clips it down to 8-bit when writing the file (IIRC). So it shouldn't be too hard to support them in poser pro. Also some renderers use what are called 'delta' normal maps. These are merely the difference in the actual gemoetry normal and the calculated bump normal. By using them, not only can you store the map in smaller precision (since the range is much smaller) but you can also change the intensity of the 'bump' by changing the magnitude/values of the delta. With some limitations of course. Rez has no limitation only what your RAM limits.

And normal maps arent hard to make, you just need the right software for it. ZBrush does them easily, as does XSI and MAX. Modo too i believe. It's simply a matter of either sculpting your detail and baking it out as normals, or painting a bump and converting that. There's also a very nice free tool for working with them:

xNormal

and an nVIDIA plugin for photoshop:

Photoshop normal mapper

Quote - I hate to admit it, but I do not understand the term "baked," which I have seen several times lately.

Baking simply means taking some calculated value in a render and writing it out as a texture. That way you only do the calculation once per image/animation and not for every single pixel in the image or every frame in the animation. You can bake out stuff like lighting, shadows, complex nodes or IBL, AO, GI etc. So eg if you have a scene in which only the camera is moving and the lights etc are all still, then there is no point in calculating the lighting and shadows again and again. You just calculate it once, store it to texture and reuse it for each frame.

Can save a lot of rendering time if your renderer supports it (dont think FF does though)

EF (or SM if they wanna be called that) must have some good reason for adding the feature in. Guess we'll just have to sit back and wait to see what advantage/disadvantage it has to offer?

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

Quote - Here's a secret. Normal maps are already supported and always have been. Load one and plug it into Gradient_Bump. Voila.

Well, yes and no. :) Normal maps completely replace the original surface normal, the gradient bump is being added to the original surface normal. The idea is similar, but they're not exactly the same. And gradient bumps are only fully supported in the Poser 4 renderer.

Quote - EF (or SM if they wanna be called that) must have some good reason for adding the feature in. Guess we'll just have to sit back and wait to see what advantage/disadvantage it has to offer?

For one, compatibility. Many game engines use normal maps, many modelers export normal maps and there are more and more standalone tools to generate normal maps from high-res geometry. For example this will open new paths for creating Poser content or using content that was created for real-time applications. And it's always good to have new options, isn't it?

  I made a greyscale bump map and converted it into a normal bump one. This is a render from Poser 6 SR3.  I took the cubes and low poly spheres from props primitives library. On the left is an example of displacement with that bump map. In the middle they are with the bump map in the bump channel. On the right there is normal map applied to the gradient bump channel. 

  The displacement alters the geometry. So strong that it exploded the box. Bump and displacement always have artifacts, even with higher displacement bounds in render settings.  Normal map gives high detail, but it would not show this detail from the side view in the same way like displacement does.

 Anyway, that would be great to see that real time shading in the preview window of the next Poser.

12/18/07

"And gradient bumps are only fully supported in the Poser 4 renderer"

Stewer:

To what degree (in what way) is the Gradient_Bump channel supported in the FireFly rendering engine? There should be no problem in acquiring an answer to this as Poser 7 is long on the market.

If it will not cause you difficulties, I would like some information about Poser 7 Pro. The PDF file does not directly mention Gradient_Bump, only that the 7/Pro/Base versions support Bump maps. This implies that there will be no change in the Bump Map features (Bump and Gradient_Bump) as they are presently implemented.

Does anyone know, or can anyone say how Normal Maps will differ from the Gradient_Bump implementation of Poser 4 - Poser 7?

Will Normal Maps have their own plug in channel in addition to Gradient_Bump, or will it replace Gradient_Bump altogether?

LMK

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.

Quote - > Quote -

Yes, it would be killer if Poser could adapt real time normal mapping in it's preview window,.

 

.. would it really?..initially I thought it pretty cool that Poser might have real-time bump effects,but that's purely from a gimmicky point of view,in practice I can't think of any good reason to have it,& I can't think of any occasion where a real-time bump preview would be of any benefit.sure it might look cool in the preview window but how often does one render using the preview engine?
Cheers
Stefan

 

Would it be practical?
Absolutely not.
Would it look cool?
Absolutely.

Comitted to excellence through art.

Hi Everyone

Here's an example of a low poly normal mapped model.

Happy Holidays

Pat

Here's the wire

mulllltipass!

Yep!   9 Passes.  BTW  anyone with a nvidia video card may want to check out this link. 

" I can't think of any occasion where a real-time bump preview would be of any benefit"

I can.

There is a strategy for an animator whose look-and-feel is 'stylized realism." It consists of getting the software and video card to produce the best possible representation in the viewport at all times. Then........you render the viewport playback as animation.

Since "the system" has been optimized for fast response while engaged in posing, etc., you are talking about less than 2 seconds to "render" the viewport. Perhaps less! Add anti-alias and your frame render rate goes perhaps to 4-5 seconds.

Now....you can't go for photorealism. Shadows are a little bit of a problem. But.....if your ultimate "magic" is in postprocessing, guess what....you've got some pretty damn good raw footage at the cost of 4 seconds per frame. Open the sequence in AfterEffects and any 'issues' due to the fact that your raw was not actually "fully rendered" can be addressed in a stylized way.

Frankly, Poser is pretty cool for this technique. I've been using it. The new 2008 version of 3DSMax has advances in viewport realization which feed this paradigm.

This casts a whole new light on video card power, OpenGL implementation and feature power -- such as viewport bump/normal/displacement  in the viewport. Basically, it's hardware-assisted render of raw frames.

::::: Opera :::::

               "you are talking about less than 2 seconds to "render" the viewport. Perhaps less! Add anti-alias and your frame render rate goes perhaps to 4-5 seconds."

do you have any examples of this..seem like a pretty basic way of rendering as your missing out on lighting & all the material effects,personaly I could never render like that,
I could render a preview like that..but with a preview I dont really care how the bumps look

the real time shadow display in max2008 coupled with dx shaders is indeed good,& that's the kind of real time effect that will aid me in creating images

if your into very speedy realtime rendering..have you looked into using game engines?using Cryengine I can render normal,displacement,sss,ambient occlusion,reflection,soft shadows etc..all in real time :)
the engine comes with the game Crysis & you can get it for less than the price of Poser

Cg Society Portfolio

I'll post a link tomorrow..no time tonight. yes, Max now has shadows in the viewport.

All animators are after fast render time. But I want the high-poly/textured assets like V4, dynamic hair and cloth....so game engines do not spring to mind. I'll think that thru.

::::: opera :::::

being hi-poly isnt a problem in recent game engines(no dynamic hair or cloth though):
http://forum.daz3d.com/postimages/origimage_1_1047266.jpg

Cg Society Portfolio

This discussion got me curious about something slightly sidestep to this thread.

I wonder why it is that various Poser content vendors don't appear to take as much advantage of detailing their models with bumps, displacements and gradient mapping.

I'm making couple of pieces right now, and have a fair amount of detail done as bump maps. (Fine clothing wrinkles, seams and similar minor details). The feedback I'm getting from some people is as if this is some sort of a super novel idea (it's not).

The reason I'm asking is, if I'm overlooking a major disadvantage of bump maping, I'd like to know!  One plausible reason may be that for a lot of vendors, good part of their target audience is not comfortable with bump maps and/or uses the lowest render settings?
Any thoughts?

Hi, my namez: "NO, Bad Kitteh, NO!"  Whaz yurs?
BadKittehCo Store  BadKittehCo Freebies and product support

Quote -
               "you are talking about less than 2 seconds to "render" the viewport. Perhaps less! Add anti-alias and your frame render rate goes perhaps to 4-5 seconds."

do you have any examples of this..seem like a pretty basic way of rendering as your missing out on lighting & all the material effects,personaly I could never render like that,
I could render a preview like that..but with a preview I dont really care how the bumps look

the real time shadow display in max2008 coupled with dx shaders is indeed good,& that's the kind of real time effect that will aid me in creating images

if your into very speedy realtime rendering..have you looked into using game engines?using Cryengine I can render normal,displacement,sss,ambient occlusion,reflection,soft shadows etc..all in real time :)
the engine comes with the game Crysis & you can get it for less than the price of Poser

 

I don't understand what you mean by missing out on materials and lighting effects.  Preview already shows approximate diffuse and specular values, with regard to scene lights.  There's already an option to use the GPU to more closely approximate transparent and procedural materials.  What I think a number of us would like to see added to preview would be bump/normal maps and cast shadows.  This is mostly an animation thing, as long per-frame render times are more acceptable for high-res stills.  In the end it comes down to what you are trying to do, but for animators working independently being able to use our GPUs to instantly render graphics of the quality of Gears of War or Ratchet and Clank: Future would be a great time saver and in many cases all we'd need to produce acceptable visuals, especially in non-photoreal styles.

Quote - I'm making couple of pieces right now, and have a fair amount of detail done as bump maps. (Fine clothing wrinkles, seams and similar minor details).

 

sounds awesome. that's not something commonly seen. seems that most people, if they put in seams either model them in (rare) or paint them into the texture.
 

Quote - The feedback I'm getting from some people is as if this is some sort of a super novel idea (it's not).

 

You would think it's not but compaired to many of the products out there now, it really is.

I picked up a product the other day that had baked in highlights and shadows for details in the texture and  used a desaturated version of the texture as a bump.

Quote -  The reason I'm asking is, if I'm overlooking a major disadvantage of bump maping, I'd like to know! 

 

I know there is potential for problems with displacement, but i have never heard of anything in bump maps causing problems.

Quote -  One plausible reason may be that for a lot of vendors, good part of their target audience is not comfortable with bump maps and/or uses the lowest render settings?
Any thoughts?

 

I think most of the target audience doesn't know how to use bump maps properly and when they decided to make something and sell it, they don't use them or do them incorrectly.

My Homepage - Free stuff and Galleries

Quote -  I don't understand what you mean by missing out on materials and lighting effects.  Preview already shows approximate diffuse and specular values, with regard to scene lights. 

 

What that meant to me is that if one is using render settings so low that all it takes to render a frame is a few seconds, they're missing out on the potential image quality and appeal.

When I do some of my architetural viz animations, sure, I can turn the quality of the render down to render things at seconds per frame, but what I get is unacceptable presentation quality. For that target audience.

When I use more refined lighting and textures, the render time per frame is counted in minutes and tens of minutes or more (in othe older days), rather then seconds.

Quote -  I think most of the target audience doesn't know how to use bump maps properly and when they decided to make something and sell it, they don't use them or do them incorrectly.

 
Seems like it's not just the users, but a fair number of vendors too.
I can see it with displacement maps, you actually have to turn them ON in render settings (default render setting has them off)

It's possible I missed something, but I didn't see the way to globally turn bump maps off - short of disconnecting the material node or setting the dial to 0.  heh, well, that'll be a learning experience once the thing is out.

Hi, my namez: "NO, Bad Kitteh, NO!"  Whaz yurs?
BadKittehCo Store  BadKittehCo Freebies and product support

thank you, bagginsbill !  It is awfull, I never knew about this feature in Poser. It works so fine! 

If I only knew :( everything would be different.

Merry Xmas and Lucky '08 to you, bagginsbill 

!

moogal >>I don't understand what you mean by missing out on materials and lighting effects<<

I meant cast shadows and bump maps and certain shader effects, which are not actuated in the viewport at this time. Sorry I didn't explain that more accurately.

Connie, I am not talking about reducing settings on Firefly in an attempt to get the time down to seconds....I am literally speaking of NOT rendering Firefly at all: just rendering Preview.

Rendering out to lossless image sequence with Preview gives me a rendertime per frame between 1 and 5 seconds (the higher time is with anti-alias turned on.) Since I am going for realism (stylized), I want as much quality in the viewport (preview) as I can get. You can't have cast shadows in the viewport in Poser at this time (3DSMax v2008 just got it). But since I am also going for 'stylized' realism as opposed to the more demanding photorealism, the preview result is sufficient, since I can apply filters and effects in AfterEffects, which might add another 5 seconds or so per frame there.

If I can get a look that works...hey, these are great and necessary render times for the small studio/artist/filmmaker.

moogal >> There's already an option to use the GPU to more closely approximate transparent and procedural materials.  <<<
What option is this please?

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - > Quote -  I don't understand what you mean by missing out on materials and lighting effects.  Preview already shows approximate diffuse and specular values, with regard to scene lights. 

 

What that meant to me is that if one is using render settings so low that all it takes to render a frame is a few seconds, they're missing out on the potential image quality and appeal.

 

yup,that's what I meant..the quality of an ogl preview render would probably be in line with a Poser 3 render(transparency & color maps are about the only material effects you could achieve,(did poser 3 have transparency?))..but hey,if that's good enough for a 'stylised' render then it's all good.

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

Cheers
Stefan

Cg Society Portfolio

Attached Link: Click to download short animation, 4 MB Quicktime

rendered in Poser7 in Preview mode; rendertime: 4 seconds per frame. Post in After effects.

Notice that that are clever ways to get dynamic cloth AND dynamic hair actuated, even with Preview render!

my two rendering stations are busy for the next few days....so I can't show a GREAT example of stylized realism achieved at less than 10 seconds per frame combined raw and postprocessing time.

This little red dress animation is a "hint" of what I'm shooting for. Probably too much "film grain" but still, I like it. 

Working with this paradigm does several things: it invokes realism as opposed to Toon; it avoids the Uncanny Valley; fast render; no limit to creativity in post processing.

I am sinking into Max v2008 now and plan to really push this idea. I still like Poser and Carrara for it, as well.

::::: Opera :::::

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

Hi, my namez: "NO, Bad Kitteh, NO!"  Whaz yurs?
BadKittehCo Store  BadKittehCo Freebies and product support

Hey, Operaguy, that's looking very nice!

Hi, my namez: "NO, Bad Kitteh, NO!"  Whaz yurs?
BadKittehCo Store  BadKittehCo Freebies and product support

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.

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

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.

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Hahah. OMG. Reflection doesn't work either.

This is terrible.

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

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!

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

thats a disaster.