Normal map at SL not visible

[Hellfire Markstein]

Hi,

I was creating a Normal Map for a barrel as shown in the pics below.

 

The normal map looks like this: (not the best but ok)

 

 

And when I upload this Normal map to SL and drag it to the designed slot the Normal map isnt visible as shown in the pic below.

Why dont i see the Normal map at all?

[Quarrel Kukulcan]

Make sure Advanced Lighting is on. Other than that, I have no idea.

[Hellfire Markstein]

 

1 hour ago, Quarrel Kukulcan said:

Make sure Advanced Lighting is on. Other than that, I have no idea.

It is on.

[ChinRey]

7 hours ago, Hellfire Markstein said:

Why dont i see the Normal map at all?

Try to type Ctrl+Shift+N to switch to low sun afternoon windlight. Do you see the normal map now?

Also, if you have graphics set to ultra, try to change to high.

[KT Kingsley]

A bit of specularity makes normals more obvious.

[Chic Aeon]

8 hours ago, Hellfire Markstein said:

Hi,

I was creating a Normal Map for a barrel as shown in the pics below.

 

The normal map looks like this: (not the best but ok)

 

 

And when I upload this Normal map to SL and drag it to the designed slot the Normal map isnt visible as shown in the pic below.

Why dont i see the Normal map at all?

On my computer I can see a slight band of normal mapping between the black bands where it should be. I cannot see the others.

Normal maps are VERY DEPENDENT ON WINDLIGHT (EEP) settings. So try different settings.  You might need to bake to a large texture plane to get a good result as those edges look very jagged. I use a separate material makers program so can't help beyond that. Good luck. 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Yeah i think that normal map is already here but there is something wrong with your model's shading. or something wrong with now you baked those normals because all that flat blue indicate "no normal differences" which is simply not possible given that your upload is smooth shaded.

Speaking of, why is it if the normal target was flat shaded?

Edited January 30, 2021 by Kyrah Abattoir

[Quarrel Kukulcan]

6 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Yeah i think that normal map is already here but there is something wrong with your model's shading. or something wrong with now you baked those normals because all that flat blue indicate "no normal differences" which is simply not possible given that your upload is smooth shaded

The center parts of the wood slats are flat.

Also, do and/or should the normal map bake be affected by whether the hi-poly and/or low-poly model are flagged as flat shaded or smooth shaded? And does it vary by program?

[arton Rotaru]

11 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Speaking of, why is it if the normal target was flat shaded?

Perhaps Generate normals was checked in the SL importer?

 

5 hours ago, Quarrel Kukulcan said:

Also, do and/or should the normal map bake be affected by whether the hi-poly and/or low-poly model are flagged as flat shaded or smooth shaded? And does it vary by program?

When baking normal maps, there are a few things which are important to get a flawless bake. That includes UV splits at hard edges, matching triangulation on the in-world model and bake target model, and indeed, similar vertex normals.

Another very important part is a synced baking workflow. That is, the baker uses the exact same tangent basis calculation, the in-game renderer is using. Unfortunately there is no baker out there which is 100 % in sync with the SL renderer. So we see more, or less shading errors on smooth shaded surfaces. In the past, pretty much any program used it's very own tangent basis calculation to bake tangent space normal maps. Today though, more and more programs and game engines include the so called MikkTSpace tangent space. That's what Blender, and Substance Painter does use for example. Unfortunately SL does not.

However, there should be something to be seen from the normal map regardless.

Edited January 31, 2021 by arton Rotaru

[Hellfire Markstein]

Thanks for all your answers.

I was faking a normal map by combining the displacement map and thel normal map from the wood material.

The result is ok I think. To sclupt and to make a normal map out of it is fine for cycles, but to use it in SL seems to be terrible.

 

 

Edited February 3, 2021 by Hellfire Markstein