topic Re: Normal Map with Reflections in 3ds Max Shading, Lighting and Rendering Forum

Normal Map with Reflections

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 00:27:00 GMT

I am having some trouble with a Normal map. I have very little experience using them, and am attempting to use one for the relief on a coin. I've made a Normal map from a very high detail displacement mesh that I have made, and it is working well, with the exception of the reflection on the relief. It is essentially a fairly matte looking version of the gold.

The coin is in a highly reflective Arch & Design gold material, and I have applied the Normal map relief as a Bump map to a copy of the material. I am guessing I need something on the Reflection Glossiness map, but I don't know what.

Texturing has never been an area I have a great deal of knowledge in, unfortunately.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Re: Normal Map with Reflections

rendermaster — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 07:01:32 GMT

perhaps you need something to reflect at...anyhow check this setting

Re: Normal Map with Reflections

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 03:22:55 GMT

I do have an environment map set up, and the rest of the coin is reflecting properly. I will take a look at your settings to see if there is something obvious I am missing.

Here is what I currently have, it is the car that is normal mapped.

Re: Normal Map with Reflections

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 04:25:16 GMT

Well, this is a little embarrassing... I went over my material settings just comparing a few things with yours to see if there was something I had overlooked, and it appears that the material with the normal map just isn't all that reflective.

I think that what I must have done was to make a copy of the gold before I had refined the Reflection settings, while I was still modelling the coin, and neglected to update it when I did the refining. I updated the Reflection settings to match, and it's looking good.

Thank you for that, sometimes it's a good reminder not to take things for granted!