Blackmagic Forum

From the research that I've gathered, Normal(bump) maps help the definition of polygons' edges and Height maps increase in elevation the closer the color is to white and decrease in elevation the closer they are to black.

Now, if I have a bricks model and I have the bump map and height map available for this model, can I use both of them for the cooktorrance node or should I use one of them for the Displacement3D node?

There's not a hard-and-fast rule, but the height map should usually be used with Displace3D.

You can, however, convert a height map into a bump map and combine it with the existing bump. Vito and I did the work on that a while ago. Let me see if I can find that tutorial...

Wow, Vito took a really long time to start getting to the point in this one! There's some context for what he's talking about during the first 8 minutes with regard to relighting, but I hopefully set this link to where he starts talking about combining normals. This is in the context of the Shader tool, but you can use it to combine normals for other purposes, too, if you need to. I wouldn't reach for this technique immediately, but it's here if you should need it.

Bryan Ray wrote:Wow, Vito took a really long time to start getting to the point in this one! There's some context for what he's talking about during the first 8 minutes with regard to relighting, but I hopefully set this link to where he starts talking about combining normals. This is in the context of the Shader tool, but you can use it to combine normals for other purposes, too, if you need to. I wouldn't reach for this technique immediately, but it's here if you should need it.

I suppose that you wanted me to watch the part where he explains the "BryanRaySWAG" node? The video started from 0:00, so I watched the whole thing until 26:00, since he does something else.

From what I understood, you use this node to combine the ObjectNormals, BumpNormals and Beauty. (Not sure what is the beauty map, is it the BaseColor?)

The math seems complex, I only need the result to be honest. But after connecting the inputs to this node, he uses a shader and a contrast/brightness node after to give it the lighting that he wants.

I explained it to see if you could correct me or if I'm missing something important.

The point was simply that if you for some reason needed to create normals from your heightmap (using the CreateBumpMap node), this would be the method you would use to combine those with the bump prior to plugging into the bump map input. Combining them properly will ensure that the resulting bump normals will be correctly reoriented to match the new apparent angle of the surface.

But again, I think probably you'd want to use the height map for displacement. That's usually what it's meant for.

Beauty is simply the full RGB render. You're not dealing with that or the Shader node since you're not relighting an existing render, but creating a new one. I honestly didn't watch the whole video—I just skipped around until I found the spot where he started talking about normals, so I'm not actually sure what I actually gave you.

Bryan Ray wrote:The point was simply that if you for some reason needed to create normals from your heightmap (using the CreateBumpMap node), this would be the method you would use to combine those with the bump prior to plugging into the bump map input. Combining them properly will ensure that the resulting bump normals will be correctly reoriented to match the new apparent angle of the surface.

But again, I think probably you'd want to use the height map for displacement. That's usually what it's meant for.

Beauty is simply the full RGB render. You're not dealing with that or the Shader node since you're not relighting an existing render, but creating a new one. I honestly didn't watch the whole video—I just skipped around until I found the spot where he started talking about normals, so I'm not actually sure what I actually gave you.

Essentially, it depends on how you want your footage to look like if you would go to use the Height Map or Normal Map or mix them both together using this Node.

Yes, I will definitely use the Height Map for the Displacement3D.

I was confused on why there's no input into one of the illumination nodes that accepts both a normal map and a height map.