How to combine maps - bump and normal map, 2 displacement maps?

[pawelfb]

I am new in Arnold, and I have 2 questions.

1. I have bump map and normal map, and I need to apply them to my model using Standard Surface material. At first I have to combine them, but I don't know how, because "Normal Bump" map doesn't work with Standard Surface material.

2. I have 2 displacement maps, first is 32bit from ZBrush and second is additional 16bit from Painter. I would like to combine them and apply to my model - how can I do it?

I will be grateful for your help friends:)

[madsd · Accepted solution]

In order to do something like that you should switch to the Physical material first.

• Use Physical material
• Add Legacy normal map to bump slot
• Add my custom high grade normal blend node
• Add my bump2normal node ( zap wrote it )
• Disable auto gamma in the texture loaders on both normal map and displacement map

Now if you use a HDRI in the viewport you will be able to see them mix correctly.
Attached the custom shaders, you drop into plugins/OSL and restart application and find them in the OSL category.

This is the correct way to blend the 2 types together.
It also works perfect with Arnold of course.

I attached 2 gif videos, watch them and understand how to operate system.
Also attached the 2 custom shaders.

Here are 2 images from the instuction videos attached.

------------------------
Mads Drøschler
TD/Artist & Developer.

Your daily dose of OSL Shaders
https://gumroad.com/madsdroschler

[pawelfb]

Thank you Mads, I will try it. But I need to deal with it using Standard Surface material as well. I am serching whole internet and I can't find solution. Is it really impossible to combine 2 displacement maps or bump and normal map using Arnold maps and materials?

Now I can't even find a solution to combine multiple textures, for example I have one object with divided UV on 3 UDIMS - and I can't put them together. There was no problem when I used V-ray, but Arnold is full of basic problems:)

[madsd · Accepted solution]

You can use the Standard Arnold material as well.
It is adviced to use the Physical material, else I will get Zap on my neck 🙂
It works very well in the viewport.

Often, shortcomings are related to insufficient knowledge to solve a case, of course it can happen the application is unable to do certain things, but more than often, it comes down to lack of user interaction.


Try throw the UDIM question up on the Arnold Answers portal, its a dedicated Arnold forum.
However, the OSL bitmap Loader has UDIM support as well. Might give it a try.

[pawelfb]

Thank you Mads, I checked your tricks and most of them works great!:) Thank you for Bump2Normal and NormalBlend shaders, now I can combine Bump and Normal map, it works even with arnold standard material, as you said.

But I have no idea why NormalBump map doesn't work anymore. There was 2 slots, one for Normal map and second for additional Bump map, I could increase or decrease strength of every map. Now I can't because Arnold doesn't see additional Bump map, only Normal map. Maybe I should put some map in the Additional Bump slot (for bump), and then import final Bump texture?

I tried BitmapLookup map for UDIMs as well, and it works perfect! Now working with UDIMs is sooo simple, Thaaank you Mads!!! 😄

And last thing - combinig the displacement maps. I used Add(Vector) map for combining 2 displacement maps (as you showed me), and it's combining them. I can increase and decrease strength of every displacement map, but there is one thing which is not working good - Add(Vecor) map is distorting my displacement maps. When I use my disp map straight to Arnold Properties modiffier, it looks ok. But if I put it in Add(Vector) map and then in Arnold Properties modiffier, then my disp is distorted - I think it looks like inverted? And what is more, whole object is shifted a little bit. I attached a screenshot.

[pawelfb · Accepted solution]

I've found the solution for mixing displacements. Instead of Add(Vector) map it is better to use Layer RGBA map, there you can mix all disp maps as you want and it works perfect:) You can even mix normal maps, bump maps, ect.

And for mixing normal with bump - you can put "Normal Bump" (with normal map) and "Bump2d" (with bump map) in Add(Vector) map and plug it in normal/bump slot of the material. Works great.

[CreativeFRV]

This is all awesome, i’ve been struggling with getting my head around Arnold since its release. 3-D is not my day today so much anymore so I’m just not spending enough time learning. Can you point me to some educational materials for Arnold? It seems tutorials via YouTube are in short supply. I’m simply looking for the best path to utilize displacement mapping and I’m not finding what I need. Any help is greatly appreciated.