Request thread: creating your Normal map shader in maya

[crazyfool]

what is the correct way of putting a normal map into maya material editor?

as in you have your blinn material and you have added your colour, spec etc but then you want to add your normal map to it.

this is because I was talking to monkiilord and we are both having a little strangeness happening with our normal maps. now the normal maps are fine but when we add lighting to the mix it starts doing strangeness and doesn't react to the lights like they should. here are some screens, i got a blue point light to one side and an orange to the other and an ambient over head set to a grey tone.

this is hardware rendering


this is how it comes out in maya software/mental ray/turtle




now the specular levels have not been changed in the images from the default but when you do it seems like the lights dont hit the object properly and reflect off the wrong side.

just wondering how people are doing theirs because I only know of two different ways of applying the normal map to your shader and know there is loads of different ways but what is the best way of applying your normal map to your blinn texture?

the way I set this one up was
1. I went into the material editor and created a blinn and a file texture.
2. went into connection editor
3. loaded them in left and right
4. connected file>out colour to blinn>normal camera
5. assigned my normal map to the file texture
6. applied to model

Sorry,just realised there is a help section, could this be moved there. Im really sorry

[Sentientv2]

Took me a few minutes to relocate this, but I think this might help you somewhat.

Brandon Newton - Character Artist and Game Art Generalist

It is a cgfx shader that lets you plug in normal map, diffuse, and tweak the various settings.