Normal Map Not Working

[leejk]

Hello,

I'm having difficulty getting normal mapping to actually work. I have a just a plane, with a material assigned to it that is using the VRayNormalMap in the bump map slot of the material. In the VRayNormalMap I am using a normal map generated by the 3d tools in Photoshop 2015. I did linearize the gamma of the normal map. However, I'm not seeing any results. Could someone tell me what I should start looking at for the cause?

Using latest VRay build in 3ds max 2016.

thx

[leejk]

I setup some render elements and inspected those, and using the VRayGlobalIllumination pass it shows that the normal map effect is not present, but rather just shows the plane as a smooth surface. Turning off GI does fix the issue, but how would I fix the GI issue?

[Deflaminis]

If all you have illuminating the scene is GI/dome light then the lack of directionality may cause some weirdness. Seems like you'd need a shadow casting light in there somewhere because GI itself likely won't affect the normal map. Your lighting pass will have the normal info, without any direct light you probably need something like displacement. Anyone, please correct me if I'm wrong.

[leejk]

The main light in the scene is a VRay dome light, which is normally all I use for the type of renderings in this project. I have tried adding various other light types and normal maps, but the GI pass is always absent of the normal map effect, which in turn just washes it out in the final render. I can crank up the bump amount values to crazy levels and get somewhat better results, and also in VRay properties for the object I can turn off the Receive GI option, but I'd rather figure out how to overcome the GI issue to begin with if it's possible..

[svetlozar.draganov]

Might be better to attach the scene(including maps) so we could investigate what's going on.

[leejk]

This problem has happened again... attached is a test scene that is using the lighting setup we normally use. Just one dome light. It works well, but does not all for bump mapping it seems. In this test it is setup for bump mapping, but the same problem seems to happen with any type, normal or bump.

You'll need 2019 to open it.

cloth.zip