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Viewing tangent space or object space normal maps
Map and position textures
Hardware shading limitations
Creating and using mirrored normal maps on a character
or object
Mirroring a normal map across a character allows
you to optimize texture usage where all of the normal map detail
is symmetric around the UV axis. For example, the two arms of your
character may share the same normal map.
If both halves of the geometry are rendered
into the normal map on top of each other, the mirroring of the normals
introduces artifacts into the combined result. Therefore, you need
to specify which half of the geometry defines the normal map (and
which half just uses it).
Follow these steps to create your normal map.
Creating
and displaying a mirrored normal map on a character or object: Option
1
- Set
the UV Winding Order of your object
to Detect to ensure that both sides
of your mirrored normal map are displayed correctly. For more information
about UV Winding Order, see
UV Winding Order in
the Polygonal Modeling guide.
- Select
the half of the object (for example, face) that you want to define
the normal map for. Leave this half within the 0 to 1 UV range.
- Move
the other half of the object out of the 0 to 1 UV range so that
it does not affect the generated normal map.
- Bake
the normal map using
Lighting/Shading > Transfer Maps.
Creating
and displaying a mirrored normal map on a character or object: Option
2
- Set
the UV Winding Order of your object
to Detect to ensure that both sides
of your mirrored normal map are displayed correctly. For more information
about UV Winding Order, see
UV Winding Order in
the Polygonal Modeling guide.
- Select
Lighting/Shading > Transfer Maps and
enable the Ignore Mirrored Faces option
under the Maya Common Output section.
See
Ignore Mirrored Facesfor
more information.
Tip
- For
best results, ensure that each side of your model has consistent
UV winding. Otherwise, artifacts may appear.
- To
avoid seams when mirroring normal maps on a character, ensure that the
source geometry is symmetric. That is, one side of the character matches
the other. This becomes particularly important when working with
surface meshes that are derived from scan data.