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NinjaTaco
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Here is a gator. Having problems rendering normal map in xsi 7. I import the model in xsi, give it a tangent property (as advised on another forum) open render tree, you can see the setup I used... For some reason the normal map has seams and also it's rendering backwards. Where there should be grooves coming out they are pushing in... I know this isn't an xsi forum. Was hoping that maybe someone might know. I tried checking on unbiased tangents and it only gets worse. Aside From the problems with xsi. Painting in 3dcoat is fun and works good. I had to redo my uvs a little and it was great that when the uvs were redistributed the texture was as redistributed with the right uvs. (great feature)

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looks like you're using version 7? if so, here's a handy compound for additional normal map control:

http://community.softimage.com/downloads.p...file&id=221

To be honest, I'm suspicious that XSI/Mental Ray is not maximizing normals to their fullest capacity

(but probably, I need to dial in my lighting/rendering setup better) as it seems my normals come out

too weak or get blown out (if I ramp up the strength using the above compound)... <shrugs>

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  • 4 weeks later...
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I think there is something wrong with the way xsi handles normal maps from other applications. I tried the compound. I got better results but not quite right. Like you said, I ramp it up to high and it looks blown out and wrong. A strange effect I noticed was that some areas of the normal map were dipping in where it shouldn't be and some places were actually behaving correctly. This seems like a really old problem with xsi. Either the SI team or the Mental images team is to blame, or either there is some magic trick to getting it to work. I tried the normal map in cinema4d. It worked fine given I increase the intensity. I had to get rid of the ridges on the chest it created an odd optical illusion in both xsi and c4d. Like the rises sometimes look like dips and the dips look liked ridges it all changed based on the lighting scheme, I think normal maps probably don't work so well when placed on a surface that is rather convex.

My last rendering using xsi. Still not quite right.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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