#3D COAT ALPHA MAP FULL#
#3D COAT ALPHA MAP SOFTWARE#
#3D COAT ALPHA MAP PLUS#

They are grayscale, with each value representing a specific height. Giving the impression of far more detail.īump maps are how things used to be done. The original base normal directions continue to be taken into account, but are now including the normal directions. Now if we were to add a normal map to our model, the engine would see the following. This is what the engine sees when it's lighting a regular surface. The yellow lines show the direction of the actual polygon surface normals. The black line is a cross section of a model. Their directions are relative not absolute, making them perfect for realtime use. Which is why they can be rotated, moved, bent and so on. Tangent Space maps are considered by the engine to always be facing 'up' from the surface of the polygon they're used on (so you don't get much change in color on the Blue channel), so whatever direction this type is facing, it still thinks its facing up. But unless they are handled specially, there's little to be done with them.

The quality is usually deeper and richer. Each pixel is capable of facing in any direction. World and Object Space maps are generated with an understanding of their position and orientation, and what they consider up on their map, is an absolute up within the world, hence you can't do much with them. Generally the following is used (assuming Y +/- equals up/down) This when all added together is what gives a normal map it's rainbow appearance.

#3D COAT ALPHA MAP PLUS#

These are used in Unity and most if not all other 3D engines available today.īump Maps are not as advanced as normal maps as they contain only height information (explained below), but can bend, rotate, tile, move with no adverse effects.Įvery color value in a normal map represents an angle, using 128 for the plus direction and 128 shades for the negative. These can move, rotate, tile and bend without harming their appearance. They're best used for Rigid dynamic objects. These can move and rotate, but cannot tile or bend, or the same appearance issues will occur. Because of this, world space normal maps are best reserved for static objects like buildings. Doing so will cause them to appear incorrectly.

This type is fixed within the world, which means they cannot move, rotate, tile or bend.

#3D COAT ALPHA MAP FULL#

They aren't currently used by Unity and only mentioned here to further confuse people.īecause they both use the full spectrum of colors they are: a) Better quality than Tangent Space and b) More limiting than Tangent Space. World Space and Object space normal maps are basically the same thing, depending on how they're used in a game world.

#3D COAT ALPHA MAP SOFTWARE#

A normal map simply makes the software believe a single polygon is made up from thousands of polygons, but without the processing cost of dealing with so many polys. For example, a smoothing angle of 45 degrees means only polygons that are at a 45 degree or more angle to connected polygons will be smoothed, while all others will remain the same.Ī normal map is a specially treated image that tricks a compatible 3D engine into believing a surface has more normal data than it actually does, and therefore giving the impression of greater detail, or smoother surfaces. The higher the smoothing angle, the more a surface is smoothed. The angle of smoothing is the angle the smoothing will begin to occur between two connected polygons. Because it's a cheat method, the silhouette remains the same. It does this by altering the normal directions of certain vertices to create an average direction between two adjoining polygons to give the impression of a smooth surface when lit. Yes, Smoothing Angles or Groups, is a 'cheat' method which is used to make a surface appear smoother. Each polygon can only face in one direction at a given time. That just confuses people and very few need to know all that until much later.Ī normal is the direction of any polygon surface. It's not a contest to see who can post the most mathematically correct details or bang on about splitting vertices etc. I am really hoping that Epic can get this situation resolved soon.The purpose of this thread is to help out those who are just getting into it, or a little bit lost. They keep saying that it is fixed, but I’ve seen other users recently on the answer hub with the exact same problem I’m having. I’m close to giving up on this, because as far as I can tell, it seems to be a bug in Unreal’s tangents calculations. I have read everything that Epic has posted on the subject, and tried every suggestion, but I still cannot get the kind of flawless normal mapping that I was able to achieve in Unity with handplane3D. The meshes are already triangulated before baking and import in UE4. I’ve been doing test bakes with xnormal and 3D-Coat, both using the mikktspace tangents, and while the results are mostly OK, I am still getting hard shading on flat quads where the tri-split is.

3d coat alpha map