Hi, please see attachment.
rendered in brazil r/s. Nailed down the problem to the bermuda normal map. Without it everything’s fine.
So, I just downloaded Brazil to test this out, and I also see the problem. The normal map seems to provide the proper normal values (as seen when using a diffuse-only shader in Brazil), but when a reflection shader is added to the geometry, I get this badness also. I haven’t noticed a problem like this in VRay, so I’ll have to figure out what I’m doing that’s causing Brazil to behave like this. It would seem that each renderer is handling changed normals slightly differently. I’ll take a quick look, and see if it is something easy to fix. I’m planning on another beta build soon, so this probably won’t be fixed for the next build, unless I can find an easy fix. but I will look at it as soon as I can.
Is there a way to output a bitmap equivalent to the bermuda normal map, put it in the original 3dsmax normal bump map, and check if it gives the same problem?
The only way I could set up an equivalent to the “Bermuda Normal Map” using an exported bitmap with a “Normal Bump” would be to select “Generate 1 Tile Layer”, and manually export normal maps. I could try it, but exporting normal maps isn’t available though the UI because as soon as there are multiple layers, they don’t really work.
The reason they don’t work is that Bermuda displacement consists of multiple generated bitmaps that are tiled differently (to avoid visible tiling patterns). So, no single bitmap file could be exported to represent the normals. I would have to output multiple bitmaps. This presents a problem because I can add two displacement maps together to get the correct displacement, but if I generated normal maps for both of those displacement maps, adding the two normal maps together would not produce correct normals (so that’s why Bermuda’s special normal map is required).
Essentially, the code for the Bermuda normal map is very similar to the code for “normal bump” anyway. I can give it a try with a bitmap though.
0.19.0.44083 seems to work better with brazil, just rendered a few frames of the ducky anim. There’s still something weird, trying to find out what is it.
I uploaded a new build again. This version fixes a bunch more normals problems. Hopefully all the normal mapping should be good now.