Mirror normal map

[zmurdz]

It's me again.

This time I have hit another bug:
I was doing test renders, changing material properties, UVs, and some geometry. At some point changing render or material settings stopped acting like it should.
The change between GI on and off is visible, but everytime the GI solution is the same, so is the direct lighting - increasing the lights intensity (mesh lights) doesn't change a thing. Then I tried to disable a normal map applied to the walls (it is a interior scene) and got this - see the attached images... and nearly a thousand lines on the console (attached too). I noticed that the user count for that material showed 6, while it had only 3 real users and no fake users.
Blender version is svn 2.56.2 r35374M, exporter script version: ? I don't know how to find it, OS: Gentoo Linux 64 bit

I am afraid my feedback is not much useful this time, but I really don't know where all this came from...

The following may be off topic and not related to the exporter, but to VRay, so please excuse me. But how is possible to achieve a curved mirror without touching the geometry. I have attached two renders, that have stunned me The only thing that I have done to the mirrors is applying the Loc, Rot and Scale inside blender, I have not changed the geometry itself, nor the materials and as they rendered normal - suddenly this . The only way to correct was to delete both objects and append them again from an older version of the file.

And a last off topic question: is it normal for a tangent space normal map to change drastically the shading of the surface ("Amount" set to 5.000)? It makes the walls very very dark, despite the fact that most of the map is completely empty - no detail just plain bluish color. Because this was the problem I was trying to solve when the above described bug happened.

PS. sorry for the big images.

[bdancer]

Re: V-Ray/Blender 2.5

At some point changing render or material settings stopped acting like it should.

Like it should that you think it should or like blender does or like vray in max does? So I need more info =)

Emty UI panels is a known bug: http://projects.blender.org/tracker/?fu ... 9&atid=498 I'm still finding out how to fix it and why it happens.
Btw, you got empty UI with my custom build or just a regular Blender?

About mirror: just set amount to lower value or change method. Or may be I don't understand.

Also you are using quite old exporter - update script (it will work only with latest SVN build or my special build).
Btw, as a gentoo user you definitely should compile my special build =)

[zmurdz]

Re: V-Ray/Blender 2.5

About the "stopped acting like it should" part - I meant it has stopped responding to changes - for instance I tripled the intensity of the lights, but the lighting in the scene didn't change a bit. Later I discovered the reason - it was the normal map. It is changing the surface shading dramatically.
About the empty UI - as long as it isn't permanent it's not fatal and I believe it will be resolved at the end. It never happened to me when using "pure" blender though.
About the mirror - if you look at the renders you will see the mirror is not a normal one, like it should, but a "curved" (convex) - it is reflecting like those mirror balls used for HDRI image capturing or something similar, but not planar. I didn't change anything in the mirror settings, and I am not aware of any settings that can produce such a mirror out of a planar geometry.

I can't update the scripts right now, because I another scripts I use are not updated to the latest blender svn code. So I prefer to finish this project like this, if possible.
I am using only the official Blender releases or, most of the time, I compile the svn trunk. I prefer to stick with these, so I have not tested your build

I am actually using VRay for the first time and since only a few days, so I am not entirely convinced that I will include it permanently in my workflow. So far I didn't manage to get a decent render from it, but my knowledge is still limited and the scene is quite complex. But if everything goes well donations will be on their way for sure. I hope you understand this You do a great work on this exporter!

[bdancer]

Re: V-Ray/Blender 2.5

if you look at the renders you will see the mirror is not a normal one, like it should, but a "curved" (convex)

So is it normal/bump mapped or what? =) If it is - this is correct. A little example:

[zmurdz]

Re: Mirror normal map

Interesting, I've learned something new , but no, in my case there were no textures on the mirror, just a material with reflectivity. Unfortunatelly I have overwritten the file and can't reproduce it or send it to you for inspection anymore.

[zmurdz]

Re: Mirror normal map

Found the reason for the curved reflection - smoothed normals...