Normal Maps, Specular Maps, how many can see them?

[Amphei Jierdon]

Hi, atm I am experimenting with normal maps and specular maps, and the results are very nice. 

But before I go more into it, I would like to know, how many percent residents can see theese effects. The graphics quality settings must be very high, to see theese effects, and if only a few users can see it, maybe it is better to upload more detailed meshes instead of using normal maps. 

 

[Qie Niangao]

I think it's hard to get statistics on this, but maybe the Firestorm team keeps track of such settings in their viewer. Maybe the Lab does, too, but I haven't seen them. This seems like a really good question for one of the Third Party Viewer developer meetings.

I would guess that well over half are using Advanced Lighting Model now, which is all you need for Materials maps.

Also, although it's true that there's overlap between normalmaps and more detailed (and vastly slower to render) models, the effect of a specularmap simply cannot be imitated -- certainly not by ugly static baked lighting. 

(Sadly, I'd guess that it's still well under half of SL that enables full Shadows during their normal SL use. For years, I've been sitting on projected-light content, waiting for a critical mass of users to be able to see it; I now recognize SL will probably die before that happy day ever arrives.)

[Aminlove Faulkes]

Only ALM needs to be on to see spec and normal effects.

People with weak graphic cards don't use ALM all the time (walking around), but almost everyone activate shadows and ALM when making snapshots. So if you want your items to look good and detailed on photos, it's a good idea to use them.

[arton Rotaru]

Advanced Lighting Model can be enabled on the Mid graphics preset setting already. And it's switched on by default on the Mid --- High Setting. I wouldn't call this very high graphics quality settings actually.

[Pamela Galli]

I did an informal survey in this forum a year or so ago, and IIRC it came out to about 60 percent use ALM.

found it. https://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Do-you-use-Advanced-Lighting/td-p/2912687/highlight/true

[Chic Aeon]

You CAN get much of the look of normal maps and specular by using Blender Cycles (or equivilant) instead of Blender Render and learning how to adjust the nodes for the amount of "bumpiness" and "shine" you want. This almost limits the real need for normal and specular. I almost never use a normal map now as they can have some pretty disastrous effects under certain lighting conditions (really ugly).

 

So that might be something you would want to look into if you are not already using cycles render. Other than that I would say that using very SUBTLE materials textures would be the best plan. Test under many Windlights, not just the one you use most often . Always a good plan.

When materials were first enabled not many could see them, now I go along with the over half but I have never seen any statistics either. 

 

I think the most important thing is to not RELY on a normal map to convey the shape of the object. Again, testing what it looks like without advanced lighting on is the key. It is a delicate balance. Cycles (or if you use software other than Blender then the equivalent) helps a bunch. Then most people see the item in the same way. 

 

 

[Pamela Galli]

---

Chic Aeon wrote:

You CAN get much of the look of normal maps and specular by using Blender Cycles (or equivilant) instead of Blender Render and learning how to adjust the nodes for the amount of "bumpiness" and "shine" you want. This almost limits the real need for normal and specular. I almost never use a normal map now as they can have some pretty disastrous effects under certain lighting conditions (really ugly).

 

So that might be something you would want to look into if you are not already using cycles render. Other than that I would say that using very SUBTLE materials textures would be the best plan. Test under many Windlights, not just the one you use most often

. Always a good plan.

When materials were first enabled not many could see them, now I go along with the over half but I have never seen any statistics either. 

 

I think the most important thing is to not RELY on a normal map to convey the shape of the object. Again, testing what it looks like without advanced lighting on is the key. It is a delicate balance. Cycles (or if you use software other than Blender then the equivalent) helps a bunch. Then most people see the item in the same way. 

 

 

---

I bake in shadows and shine -- with nodes but usually not cycles* -- but the advantage of mormal and specular materials is that you can see the shine/bump from different angles as you move around. 

*Since I am baking textures rather setting scenes, I don't see a great deal of advantage to cycles for my purposes. I get the cycles baking part screwed up because it seems like once I bake something with an image texture, I cannot rebake because the image texture has been replaced by the baked texture, if that makes sense. So if I can get it baked in cycles right the first time,that works great, but I hardly ever do that. I also have Substance Painter, which I also don't use, and Crazy Bump for normal and secular maps. 

[Qie Niangao]

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Pamela Galli wrote:the advantage of mormal and specular materials is that you can see the shine/bump from different angles as you move around. 

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Right. (That's what I meant about not being possible to imitate the effect of specularmaps especially.) I for one am all about how the world looks when moving through it, or when it's moving, as opposed to anything that can be captured in a static image.

Now that I think about it, though, there are certainly some surfaces for which those Materials effects just aren't that exciting.

That's probably not the OP's case, however, because she's contemplating replacing a normalmap with a more complex model (rather than merely painting a more elaborately baked diffuse texture).

And that's a twist I never really considered before: Lots of SL users with graphics too slow for normalmaps? I know: we'll make more complex geometry instead, that'll help!

One other (total) tangent: Do I remember correctly that ALM is what's enabled in order to have unlimited light sources? Otherwise we get the nearest -- what? six? -- light sources per scene. That's just lame; I can't imagine going back to that!

[Pamela Galli]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

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Pamela Galli wrote:the advantage of mormal and specular materials is that you can see the shine/bump from different angles as you move around. 

---

Right. (That's what I meant about not being possible to imitate the effect of specularmaps especially.) I for one am all about how the world looks when moving through it, or when it's moving, as opposed to anything that can be captured in a static image.

Now that I think about it, though, there are certainly some surfaces for which those Materials effects just aren't that exciting.

That's probably

not

the OP's case, however, because she's contemplating replacing a normalmap with a more complex model (rather than merely painting a more elaborately baked diffuse texture).

And that's a twist I never really considered before: Lots of SL users with graphics too slow for normalmaps? I know: we'll make more complex geometry instead, that'll help!

One other (total) tangent: Do I remember correctly that ALM is what's enabled in order to have unlimited light sources? Otherwise we get the nearest -- what? six? -- light sources per scene. That's just lame; I can't imagine going back to that!

---

Yes that's right. Occaisionally someone IMs to say his lamp doesn't turn on. I tell him to turn on ALM and voila. 

[Pamela Galli]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

I think it's hard to get statistics on this, but maybe the Firestorm team keeps track of such settings in their viewer. Maybe the Lab does, too, but I haven't seen them. This seems like a really good question for one of the Third Party Viewer developer meetings.

I would

guess

that well over half are using Advanced Lighting Model now, which is all you need for Materials maps.

Also, although it's true that there's overlap between normalmaps and more detailed (and vastly slower to render) models, the effect of a specularmap simply cannot be imitated -- certainly not by ugly static baked lighting. 

(Sadly, I'd guess that it's still well under half of SL that enables full Shadows during their normal SL use. For years, I've been sitting on projected-light content, waiting for a critical mass of users to be able to see it; I now recognize SL will probably die before that happy day ever arrives.)

---

I don't think baked lighting effects are ugly at all, mine seem to work well with ALM on -- and for the 40% who usually have ALM off especially, it is just not an option to leave everything flat and without any light effects at all. It is a compromise, but an acceptable one. I dont try to build everything I make for everyone on the grid -- mostly I build for those with mid-level and higher graphics capabilities, who can at least have ALM on and LOD level higher than minimum -- but 40% is too many to ignore. 

I like shadows for pictures but they dont really add much to, say, furniture, and can create some unpleasant smudgy effects. Maybe that is because I have an iMac (though a maxed out one).

[Drongle McMahon]

I'm going to make myself unpopular by bringing up another questionable aspect of baked specular effects. Genuine specular reflections depend on both the incident light angle and the camera angle. When you bake, there is no camera. Instead (at least in Cycles, as far as I can tell*) each pixel is essentially rendered as seen by a camera looking at it along the normal of the surface at the middle of the area corresponding to that pixel. On a complex surface, this means that each pixel receives highlights for a different camera angle. So the baked result doesn't actually represent the highlights that would be seen with any real camera. In additipon to beiong unable to respond to changes in lighting or movement of the camera, such baked highlights don't even accurately represent the highlights from any actual setup of lighting and camera.

The fact that those skilled in their use can nevertheless produce effects that satisfy many observers is testament not only to their skill, but even more to the gullibility of our perceptions.

*I would be interested if any one would like to try to convince me otherwise.

 

 

[Pamela Galli]

---

Drongle McMahon wrote:

I'm going to make myself unpopular by bringing up another questionable aspect of baked specular effects. Genuine specular reflections depend on both the incident light angle and the camera angle. When you bake, there is no camera. Instead (at least in Cycles, as far as I can tell*) each pixel is essentially rendered as seen by a camera looking at it along the normal of the surface at the middle of the area corresponding to that pixel. On a complex surface, this means that each pixel receives highlights for a different camera angle. So the baked result doesn't actually represent the highlights that would be seen with any real camera. In additipon to beiong unable to respond to changes in lighting or movement of the camera, such baked highlights don't even accurately represent the highlights from any actual setup of lighting and camera.

The fact that those skilled in their use can nevertheless produce effects that satisfy many observers is testament not only to their skill, but even more to the gullibility of our perceptions.

*I would be interested if any one would like to try to convince me otherwise.

 

 

---

As I say, it is a compromise. And it does require the suspension of disbelief that so much of SL does. 

We have 40% of SL not using ALM, and they do not want to see only a flat world without any highlights. That is even more non-realistic than baked highlights.

[ChinRey]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

One other (total) tangent: Do I remember correctly that ALM is what's enabled in order to have unlimited light sources? Otherwise we get the nearest -- what? six? -- light sources per scene.

---

There's no way to have unlimited light sources. Without ALM you have six, nothing more and nothing less. With ALM you have as many as your computer can handle, could be anything from just one or two and upwards. Hardly unlimited though.

[ChinRey]

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Aminlove Faulkes wrote:

...but almost everyone activate shadows and ALM when making snapshots.

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Oh, you better be careful with shadows if you're using normal maps. Shadows tend to obscure the effect of normal maps so that's rather pointless. You can compensate by using extra strong heavy-duty normal maps but then they'll look absolutely horrible without shadows.

[ChinRey]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I don't think baked lighting effects are ugly at all

---

That depends on how they're made and used. You can't really compare how the great texturers like Cory Edo and Hattie Panacek and Pamela Galli  use shadow effects to subtly emphasize and enrichen an already well made work to how many lesser builders use them to hide the basic flaws of their builds.

In addition to the problem Drongle already mentioned, all baked texture effects are by nature static. They may look great at a carefully staged photo session but the way I see it, SL isn't really meant to be a series of still photos, it's supposed to be dynamic. Then of course it's the question of alignment. Say you have two pieces of furniture with heavily baked textures right next to each other and they look really good together. Then rotate one of them ninety degrees and suddenly the lights on them come from completely different directions. Absolutely disatrous.

Then of course there's lag. If you're careless with tour baked textures, you can easily lag down even the most powerful game computer in the world.

Even so, there are some artists who make very good use of textures with baked light effects, not only the three (completely random) names I mentioned. But it takes skill, understanding, attention to detail and artistry to get it right.

[IvanBenjammin]

This is a major soap-box issue for me, so I'll try to restrain myself...

Its really easy to do bad normal mapping, and I get the feeling that's responsible for a lot of the negative opinions. It introduces another level of complexity to the texturing process that takes time and a whole lot of trial and error to get right - you can't throw your diffuse texture into crazy bump and expect a good result.

When done right, it works fine with shadows, and should work fine with all sorts of different lighting conditions - that's the whole point of the technology.

 

I've rewritten this post half a dozen times to keep the rant to a minimum...

[ChinRey]

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IvanBenjammin wrote:

This is a major soap-box issue for me, so I'll try to restrain myself...

---

Does that mean I don't have to? ==

You're absolutely right of course. All those tools and techniques content creators in Second Life have can be used to create a better and richer virtual world if they are used right.

But here's my rant:

Before I came to SL i was a musician and a music teacher. One of the most difficult parts of that job was to tell a fresh pupil, full of enthusiasm that maybe it's a good idea to learn how to play Mary Had A Little Lamb in tune before trying to handle Paganini.

Or when somebody in the local amateur orchestra showed off this expensive old violin he had bought and started demonstrating it by butchering Bach's Chaconne. That was wonderful. The sheer joy he expressed through his clumsy attempts more than made up for the pain he caused to the listeners' ears. It wasn't that lovely when he started to fancy himself as the next Yehudi Menuhin.

This is one of the best and worst aspects of Second Life. Here everybody have access to professional and semi-professional tools and. Anybody can be a Great Master in their own eyes and even get some others to believe it. But to actually be a master, to really be able to use all those tools efficiently, that takes a little bit of talent and a lot of hard work. Many people have the talent actually. But not all do, and much fewer are willing and able to put in the work required.

In Second Life everybody are supposed to be equal, and that's how it should be. We need all those people who feel like great builders doing the 3D modelling equivalent of Chaconne butchering. But we also need the skilled craftsmen and craftswomen who are able to use the tools effectively and we don't have a way two distinguish between the two. I don't really have an answer to this dilemma - I'm not even sure if there can be one.

[IvanBenjammin]

The answer in SL is free-market capitalism, for better or worse. I fully support the democratic ideal of the platform: everyone has the right to create, in whatever capacity they choose.

What bugs me is the stagnation of it - a stagnation that's a kind of feedback loop. Highly popular and influential creators who shun the new technologies (for whatever reason), and pass their opinions on to their customers. New creators who want to establish a name for themselves will imitate the most popular brands, which results in more stagnation.

The end result is that we still have threads like this. You have avatars with a higher polycount than characters in the latest gen games, because for some reason individually modelled buttons are important. Then someone sounds off the old "materials cause laaaaaag!" nonsense, and the cycle continues.

I may be contradicting myself a bit with these opinions. I want SL to be a platform for anyone to create, while at the same time moving forward, looking good and embracing what's possible.

[ChinRey]

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IvanBenjammin wrote:

The answer in SL is free-market capitalism, for better or worse. I fully support the democratic ideal of the platform: everyone has the right to create, in whatever capacity they choose.

---

Yes and for good or bad, it simply wouldn't be Second Life if it wasn't for that.

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IvanBenjammin wrote:

What bugs me is the stagnation of it - a stagnation that's a kind of feedback loop. Highly popular and influential creators who shun the new technologies (for whatever reason), and pass their opinions on to their customers. New creators who want to establish a name for themselves will imitate the most popular brands, which results in more stagnation.

---

To me it's even worse to see some of the great builders of the past who jump on the bandwagon using all those new tools without understanding them. Nothing an inexperienced newcomer can up with will ever be quite as sad as the works of an old master who has lost the touch.

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IvanBenjammin wrote:

...

because for some reason individually modelled buttons are important.

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Buttons? Highly detailed, high poly shoelaces are essential these days!

A friend of mine told me she had once seen a house where the maker had carefully made detailed meshes for the holes in the power sockets.

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IvanBenjammin wrote:

Then someone sounds off the old "materials cause laaaaaag!" nonsense, and the cycle continues.

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Everything causes lag. Every single pixel, vertice, tri, script line...

It's the sum of the load on the weakest link in the chain from the asset server database to the client's computer screen that matters. There's really no definite answer what is the least laggy solution, it depends on what we're trying to make.

It seems I got away with my shameless boasting last week so I take a chance and post a link to that thread here: https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Building-and-Texturing-Forum/What-it-is-actually-possible-to-build-in-Second-Life/td-p/3000850

I've added 5637 more plants and some more paths since I posted that but it's still is one of the lowest LI, lowest lag and highest level of detail (in both senses of the term) landscapes ever seen in SL.

I mentioned in the thread that something like that could only be made by using all four basic materials, mesh, sculpts, prims and particles. What I forgot to mention was that it also required just about every surface effect we have. Standard and baked textures in resolutions all the way from 4x4 to 1024x1024, alpha masking, alpha blending, normal maps, specular maps, old style bumpiness and shininess - it's all there and it all needs to be there to keep the lag down.

I'm not actually saying it's a best build in SL - it has some really annoying flaws I'm amazed nobody has commented on. But it is certainly based on the right principle: be ready to use all available tools and materials and choose the most suitable for each specific task.

[IvanBenjammin]

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ChinRey wrote:

Everything causes lag. Every single pixel, vertice, tri, script line...

It's the sum of the load on the weakest link in the chain from the asset server database to the client's computer screen that matters. There's really no definite answer what is the least laggy solution, it depends on what we're trying to make.

 

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Ehhhh....Ok. Yes, in the most absolute of terms, everything causes 'lag' (leaving aside the fact that the word 'lag' doesn't mean what most people think it does), but the load that realtime rendering causes on a system is a very well understood science.

Your sim (took a look the other day) is excellent evidence that, a) graphics hardware can handle a lot when its fed the right way, and b) its not the environment that causes SL to run poorly.

 

 

 

[ChinRey]

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IvanBenjammin wrote:

(leaving aside the fact that the word 'lag' doesn't mean what most people think it does)

---

"a usually long putt struck with the aim of having the ball stop near the hole" according to Merriam-Webster. (Some other definition there too but that's the one we use here, right?)

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IvanBenjammin wrote:

b) its not the environment that causes SL to run poorly.

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There certainly are exceptions but not many. Second Life has always had very strict restrictions how much you can rez on the land but very few limitations to what you can wear. I don't know if that means they felt avatars were too imoprtant to restrict or that they never thought avatar lag would ever become a serious problem. But this meant that Second Life tended to be more attractive to people interested in avatar appearance than in the scenery and even many of those who came here to experience the wonderful virtual world tended to become more and more avatar centered. People are always very good at finding and exploiting loopholes of course and the result is what we see today.

[IvanBenjammin]

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ChinRey wrote:

---

IvanBenjammin wrote:

(leaving aside the fact that the word 'lag' doesn't mean what most people think it does)

---

"

a usually long putt struck with the aim of having the ball stop near the hole" according to Merriam-Webster. (Some other definition there too but that's the one we use here, right?)

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IvanBenjammin wrote:

b) its not the environment that causes SL to run poorly.

---

There certainly are exceptions but not many. Second Life has always had very strict restrictions how much you can rez on the land but very few limitations to what you can wear. I don't know if that means they felt avatars were too imoprtant to restrict or that they never thought avatar lag would ever become a serious problem. But this meant that Second Life tended to be more attractive to people interested in avatar appearance than in the scenery and even many of those who came here to experience the wonderful virtual world tended to become more and more avatar centered. People are always very good at finding and exploiting loopholes of course and the result is what we see today.

---

That definition of lag is about as relevant to SL as any other 

It was probably a little of both, insofar as it was planned at all. By the time avatar load became an issue, it was too late to step in and put restrictions in place. Feedback loop again: Without any restrictions, it just got worse. In the last couple years it seems like they've made an effort to catch up and address the problem, but there's only so much that can be done while staying true to the principles of creative freedom they've established.

[ChinRey]

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IvanBenjammin wrote:

That definition of lag is about as relevant to SL as any other 

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Except of course:

Lag: the act or the condition of lagging

Lagging: material for thermal insulation especially around a cylindrical object

 

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IvanBenjammin wrote:

In the last couple years it seems like they've made an effort to catch up and address the problem.

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It's not as if they have any choice. But they're horribly late. And they're still trying to grasp the basics of a concept that has always been completely ailen to their coprorate culture: Consequence analysis. Bad habits die hard and a boss can't just give an order like "from now on we do things this way and not the way we used to". Each and every co-worker has to be followed up closely and be trained and motivated and the lesson has to be repeated over and over again for it to really sink in. That takes time, a lot of time and in LL's case they have to do it while they're desperately trying to find a way out of the hole they've dug for themselves.

[Christhiana]

I've been working on a modular boardwalk system for a while now and have experimented a lot with combinations of baked textures, normal and specular maps. With a lot of help from this forum I've now found a combination that works great for my boardwalks.

For the boardwalks I use a flat baked texture. I Bake the individual planks from a high poly model (with all edges rounded)  to my flat model using only global lighting and ambient occlusion. This gives me a flat texture of planks with ambient ocllusion shadowing of individual planks usable for non ALM settings. for the texture I use a B/W woodgrain texture with it's own normal map for the grain. I bake the normal map from the high to low poly model which gives me a combination of the high to low bake and the woodgrain normals. In SL I use the baked B/W difuse texture for both diffuse and specular maps which saves me a seperate texture for specular while still getting a good result. I color the diffuse texture by setting the object color in SL, which also gives me the option for scripting an easy color change menu. With alm turned on you get highlighting on the woodgrain as well as rounded of edges which make everything look a lot more realistic. The non alm version will not show the highlights on the rounded edges but the baked AO still makes it look great.

[Drongle McMahon]

Furthermore, Lag: "a period or term of penal servitude; prison sentence."

So you can use the same word for the phenomenon and the just desert of those who cause it: "Lag for lag!" :matte-motes-grin: