normal VS bump map

[cikho]

ehy guys!

the question is as per tittle:

to create a material with  a bump, is it better to use a bump map or a normal map?

back in showcase, i used to create normal maps, as B\N map did not work.

now in vred it looks like both work.

what is the best one?

[michael_nikelsky · Accepted solution]

I am a strong advocate of bump or better height maps. With normal maps you have a 25% chance that it will actually work correctly since there are 4 different orientations of normal maps out there. Or in other words in 75% of all cases your results will just be wrong. Height maps just always work.

Additional to that if you want to use parallax mapping or parallax occlusion mapping you will also need a height map. VRED tries to reconstruct the heightmap from the normal map when you load it but the reconstruction is not always possible and the quality of the reconstructed height map is worse than a real height map.

The only situation where a normal map makes any sense is when you have created it by baking the normal information of a high resolution mesh down to a low resolution map. But this process is tricky and not supported in VRED.

So in short: Just use height maps and avoid all the trouble of normal maps.

Kind regards

Michael 

[cikho]

well, that's clear and nice to know 🙂

so i can use a height map in the bump map channel without issues.. cool!

the bad new is, as always, that showcase archives and standards one created over the past years does not apply to vred 😐

i'll get used to this sooner or later