Hello,
This issue has been been boggling me for a while now. I have went back over some of the documentation material hoping to find an answer. I thought I did when I read about using bump offset for use with a height map. It did help, because before, if I had a normal plugged in using an image that was a bump map that was set as a normal in the editor, it would cause my mesh to have to much light, light in area where it should be shadow. Well now I am using the bump offset advanced node, and hooking it up with a bump map that is not set to normal, and I do finally get the height adjustment. The lighting issue is like it should be except one problem.
See how it curves into a peninsula, I can’t figure out why it does that. And it only happens to the very bottom of that mesh. I only have one light in the entire scene, a directional light that is set to movable atm. If I unplug the normal, the shadow is cast evenly.
Any help would be appreciated.
Regards,
Slink
Hey Slink -
Can you let me know what the Bump Offset settings are that you are using and whether the normal has the bump offset passed through its UVs? My guess would be the normal is getting pushed or pressed by the Bump Offset and is aligning incorrectly on your mesh. A screenshot of your material setup would also be helpful if possible.
Thank You
Eric Ketchum
Hey Eric,
Thanks for your response. This an image of my material setup
They are being plugged in through the normals UV channel. That one bump offset at the middle far left, I put in as an idea offered here as an alternative for my clouds appearing as if they are floating above the ground. I tried to orient my nodes in a clear manner, it was a bit of a mess, and still so. Sorry if it is hard to see where what goes.
Regards,
Slink
Hey Slink -
I think I have tracked your problem down. It looks like you have a few places where normals are getting added together when they should be Interpolated between instead, so you don’t want the normal to be Mountain plus Cloud but Mountain OR Cloud, particularly with your bump offsets and panners running. Here is my Earth material using LERPs and a Cloud Opacity Mask as the controlling Alpha between most of the Linear Interpolations:
Hey Eric,
First, your material looks so much more professional than mine, lol. Second, thanks for the advice. I am super duper appreciative of you taking the time to create and share this with me. But I am more grateful that you supplied an answer to my fault, thank you for that. So lerping is what I should have used when trying to use multiple normal maps. I am gonna go read more about that now. Again, thanks a bunch.
Regards,
Slink
Hey Slink -
Not a problem. I will say that at times you may want to add normals together (particularly if you have a detail normal that you want to layer directly on your item normal). In this particular case, the clouds and the ground wanted to be separate not a combined effect.
Eric Ketchum
