Multi Tile Not Working for Bump Map

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I’ve been learning Maya recently and ran into a problem that extensive google searching hasn’t been able to solve. I was following this tutorial for creating multi tile shaders https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iP3A30Oq4A, and well it worked for the diffuse maps, I haven’t been able to get it to work for my bump maps (or any other maps for that matter). For context, here is an image of my shader network in hypershade. In trying to fix this I found that a single bump map plugged directly into the Normal Camera node works fine, but when multiple maps are plugged in via a layered texture box, nothing appears to happen. This is the case even though each texture file has been translated to its correct position in the UV space, wrap U and V are turned off, and the blend mode for everything has been set to add. I also tried the method of plugging one map into the Normal Camera node and setting the UV tiling mode to 1-based (Mudbox). The other texture files were found (because they used the correct naming convention), but the shader didn’t change. I then tried setting the UV tiling mode to explicit tiles, but when I clicked Add Explicit Tile in order to add the next texture file, I received the following error: # Error: line 1: AttributeError: file <maya console> line 1: 'module' object has no attribute 'internal'. Using the explicit tile method on my diffuse maps (which were already working) produces the same error. Any ideas as to where I’m going wrong here and what I can do to get my multiple bump maps to display?

Thanks

Micah

[daunish · Accepted solution]

Okay, this is not going to work. I'm not going to watch that tutorial to see where it steered you wrong, because it's from Maya 2014. Try when working to find more updated information, Maya is constantly changing.

I'm sure you can get the setup you have now working. But it could be any number of problems. If you must, I would suggest moving the layered texture to before the bump2d node. You're making an assumption that the bump2d is outputting a grayscale image and it is not. You can tell because the output of the bump2d is called "out normal" and is a vector 3.

Don't use explicit tiles, it adds a complication that's totally unnecessary.

Funny enough, you actually used a tag in your description that is your answer, you just aren't using it! UDIMs are the way to go, they are the established workflow, and are perfect for this. I see you are using Mudbox, which by nature uses the naming convention _u1_v1, this is not UDIM. Translating from Mudbox naming to UDIM looks like this:
_u1_v1 = _1001

While using the standard Mudbox naming convention is fine, I suggest switching to UDIM, it more widely used and supported. You will get less, and give fewer headaches in the future.

As for why setting Maya to 1-based isn't working. I cannot say. What happens when you switch to 1-based? You said that there were no errors and that the diffuse channel worked! But the shader didn't change? What does this mean to you?

Check out the file I attached. It uses UDIM's but it would not matter what naming convention you used (1-based should work the same way). How does this look to you in the viewport?

If I had to guess, this is a setup issue. See if you can find a tutorial that shows a more up-to-date workflow and let me know.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi Daunish,

Thanks for your reply. It got me going on the right track and helped me figure out the issues I was experiencing. As it turns out, I had a number of misunderstandings which all contributed to what I was encountering. When I switched to UDIMs as you suggested, it looked like I was having the same problem as when I was using 1-base. This was because the texture in the material preview (in hypershade) didn't look the way I thought it should (based upon setting up my diffuse map) leading me to mistakenly believe that the material hadn't actually updated when I plugged in the bump map files. In actuality, the 1-base method was working just fine. What further contributed to my confusion was that I was using the Arnold renderer to see how my material shaders were being applied to my model while, in hypershade, the material preview was using 'hardware' (instead of 'Arnold'). This meant that I was seeing two very different results between the hypershade material preview and the Arnold render of my work space, further confusing me and causing me to believe that something wasn't working. By switching the material preview to Arnold I was able to get a better understanding of how my actions in hypershade affected the look of my actual model. So, by reading your reply and checking out your Maya file, watching an up to date tutorial on UDIMs, switching my work flow to utilize UDIMs, and changing my hypershade material preview to Arnold, I was able to resolve my issues and become a little more knowledgeable about Maya and shader creation.

Thanks so much for your help,

Micah