
Normal maps work by modifying the normal used when rendering a fragment.
6 Creating a Normal Map for a Ground Texture. 3 Displaying Normal maps in 3D Studio Max. The specific material type in use should be consulted to determine the use of the alpha channel in the same texture- it may be unused or may be used for an unrelated purpose. The normal data is most commonly encoded in the RGB channels of a texture file. Do not use lossy formats for storing normal maps even as an intermediate step. JPG format) will destroy a significant amount of the information contained in a normal map. Additionally, any form of lossy compression (such as. Editing the normal map in photoshop or similar will cause undefined behavior in-game. If you need to adjust the bump height in a normal map, you will need to adjust the source geometry and rebuild the normal map using the original tools. If you need to adjust the size of a normal map, you will need to rebuild the normal map using the original tools.
Specifically, do not adjust the dimensions or contrast of an existing normal map. This information is not considered directly human-editable, and you should not attempt to manipulate these channels directly. An overview of the normal mapping technique can be found on Wikipedia here.Ī normal map is stored in an image file, but it is not an image: rather than defining the red, green and blue colors of an image, the normal map RGB values determine the X, Y, and Z values for the texel's normal in tangent space. The normal map uses three channels of texture data to allow per-pixel lighting control.