Hi,


does somebody have an example on how the ‘UV Tri-Planar Project’ node can be used to also drive normal mapping and not only color?
I'd already be happy with the colors being converted to greyscale and then displace using that.

I'm using the principled shader core, but I'm not sure which additional nodes would be used. :-/


Any input welcome!
m.

Hi,

To convert your RGB color into a greyscale you can
- plug the color output from the uvtriplanarproject to a vector to float (vtf)
- then plug each output of the vtf in an average node
- plug the average output in the 3 inputs of a float to vector
and you have a greyscale color based on the average between your RGB color. Is that what you wanted ?

Did you try to plug the color output from the uvtriplanarproject in the baseN of the principledShader ? So that color (that is 3 float so it can be used as a vector) will drive your normals. Even if it might give you normals going inward your geometry on some areas.

Hope it give some hints, have a good day !

Hi EvanP,


thanks for the input!

I have played with your idea, though I'm not sure about the color value ranges that are valid to ‘look okay’. I'm getting quite some artifacts with the mandril pic mapped.

If I take the average, I have a greyscale vector:
- Do I need to multiply this with the tangent space violet color (8080ff)?
- If the values range from black to white: Is 50% grey neutral, while black points the normal backwards (and white inverted?)

I have attached an example hip file. Maybe somebody could have a look.
I'm just after a ‘valid look’ that adds some details to the surface.


Thanks!
m.

Found this cool video tutorial that converts a greyscale image to proper normals in houdini.

Now it'd just be cool to push the result of this to the texture node that feeds into the shader. If this works is an open question similar to this one here:
https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/67166/ [www.sidefx.com]


Hope I can get an input.

Thanks!
m.

Any luck with this?
I can't help much because I'm trying to do something similar and not having much luck.
I think you might be better off converting the image to a greyscale and then into a normal map using COPS. There is a gamedev node specifically made to convert grayscale to normals.