topic Re: OSL Programming tutorial: Let's write a proper Normal Blend Map in Arnold General Rendering Forum

OSL Programming tutorial: Let's write a proper Normal Blend Map

madsd — Fri, 13 Dec 2019 21:21:56 GMT

Hi,

Blending normals is not just a question about adding them up in some way, linear blend, overlay tricks or partial derivatives, has been seen through history as attempts to overcome blending multiple normals, while trying to preserve as many details as possible.

These methods does not represent the current front end.

So if you want to blend normals like a BOSS and on the same time, take your first step into writing OSL shaders for Arnold, take a look here and dive in.

The shader is based around an article by Colin Barré-Brisebois and Stephen Hill, where they show many popular blend modes and then their own superior construct called reoiriented normal blending. https://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/blending-in-detail/

VIDEO:
https://youtu.be/d462neeNXyk

I also put up a perma link on the git.
https://github.com/gkmotu/OSL-Shaders/blob/master/NormalBlend.osl

If you skipped directly to shader download, remember to revise your 2 bitmap loaders gamma space.
You want to make sure you work in linear space on everything you send into the shader.
So, and that means, set gamma to 1.0.

Shader should work in any host.

In MAX 2020.3:
- Viewport in High Quality mode with a Physical Material + Legacy normal map + 2 OSL bitmaps and this RNM shader returns normals on mesh in the viewport.
- Arnold renders them in a higher quality simultaniously.

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions to updates, corrections of errors and so forth.
And if you have other blend functions laying around, let's try put them though the shader.
We can even make a drop down with blend mode types, which I would not realy like 😄 But its possible.

Its best to just have the most efficient function in main shader and everything else is legacy instantly and gets pulled from shader chains when the master on disk gets updated by TD folks, which could be huge facility injection or 1 man band, makes no difference, its eaqually easy/hard to update master assembly in both scenarios.

If we put up 50 texture artists for a year on some mission for honor and glory, we would give them new shading tools ad hoc as needs/requests comes in. And their shaders when working with them would update in their scenes when we updated the shader on disk, so all artists active open scenes gets this upgrade automatically, no buttons touched. Small latency delay from TD area to artists Shading node canvas, but nothing serious, mili seconds on good network.

Re: OSL Programming tutorial: Let's write a proper Normal Blend Map

Anonymous — Sat, 14 Dec 2019 17:35:32 GMT

really nice
Maya
Houdini
mtd & aeTemplate here:
NormalBlend.zip

Re: OSL Programming tutorial: Let's write a proper Normal Blend Map

madsd — Sat, 14 Dec 2019 22:59:31 GMT

ah so you need some complimentary ui files for those 2 hosts.
Thanks for the files.
Ill try ship shaders I am rolling out on my site with these files as well so maya/houdini folks will get these along the downloaded shader.

I may be back to ask for testing or ask for some coop QA for UI 🙂

Re: OSL Programming tutorial: Let's write a proper Normal Blend Map

Anonymous — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 04:04:24 GMT

it's a pleasure to test your beautiful shaders
I'm ready

Re: OSL Programming tutorial: Let's write a proper Normal Blend Map

Anonymous — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 04:33:22 GMT

Update for c4D

Just add
ARNOLD_PLUGIN_PATH in the OS variable
NormalBlend.zip

Re: OSL Programming tutorial: Let's write a proper Normal Blend Map

madsd — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 05:00:45 GMT

Perfect, now we got 4 supported ui entries.

Re: OSL Programming tutorial: Let's write a proper Normal Blend Map

madsd — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 10:04:29 GMT

Great.
I stole your images and will make a 4th for MAX, then submit a post in my OSL Shaders category on my site with some explainations and so on, full credit for the UI file work OFC.

Ill attempt to make a template that other shaders can follow.

Re: OSL Programming tutorial: Let's write a proper Normal Blend Map

madsd — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 12:37:23 GMT

Something down this road ~
https://www.masd.dk/osl-shaders-normalblend/

Re: OSL Programming tutorial: Let's write a proper Normal Blend Map

Anonymous — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 13:22:10 GMT

Nice
Thank you