Lighting and Shading > Texturing >  Working with Tangent and Binormal Maps > 

Editing Tangents and Binormals

 
 
 

Periodically tangent and binormal maps contain discontinuities (sharp changes in color between adjacent polygons), which can cause artifacts in your maps. You can edit tangents and binormals to reduce these artifacts.

 

If the tangent or binormal map color has sharp transitions between polygons, artifacts may appear in realtime previews of the object.

Smoothing the tangent or binormal map can remove these sharp transitions and eliminate the resulting artifacts.

To edit a tangent or binormal map

  1. Open an explorer and expand the color at vertices (CAV) property that is storing your tangents or binormals.

  1. Click the TangentOp2 operator icon to open its property editor.

  2. Make sure that the State is set to Active.

  3. Increase the Smoothing value to smooth out the tangent or binormal map. Keep in mind that over smoothing can also introduce artifacts, so you should increase the smoothing value in small increments.

  4. Once you've adjusted the tangents or binormals, you can freeze them in that state. However, freezing the operator stack means that the tangent and binormal data can no longer be regenerated if for example you modify the topology of the object.

  5. In an explorer, select the Tangents or Binormals CAV if you want to freeze the entire stack, or an individual operator under it to freeze from that point down.

  6. Click the Freeze button on the Edit panel.

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