I'm fairly sure it shouldn't do this

Blender Courses Talk
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1

Hi

I have tried to use a normal map to give a tyre the appearance of a high poly tread using a normal map but it hasn’t come out quite as I had hoped.

This is the template:

Tyre Normal Tex Template1
Tyre Normal Tex Template11378×725 206 KB

This is the target:

Tyre Normal Tex LP1
Tyre Normal Tex LP11378×725 155 KB

This is the result:

Tyre Normal Tex rendered1
Tyre Normal Tex rendered11378×725 158 KB

My texture looks like this:

TyreNormalMap
TyreNormalMap1000×1000 70.7 KB

I have used Cycles for this as I have used it for everything else on this model so far.

Any suggestions as to why this has gone a bit weird appreciated.

Thanks!

Dan.

2

can you post an image of how your UV Unwrap maps to the Normal Map?

3

Thanks for the reply. Here it is:

Tyre Normal Tex UV on texture
Tyre Normal Tex UV on texture.png1904×1002 441 KB

It does seem as though the normal map has been laid down wrong on the texture rather than it being a a UV matching problem. I tried fiddling about with the UV and it seemed to bear this out.

I know that a lot of the wheel is a squashed mess but that is just going to have a flat, uniform texture so it won’t matter how the centre part lies.

4

When I was working through the Normal Map Lessons I had an issue with the program mapping my normals to the wrong islands which more or less ruined what I was trying to make. But from the looks of your UV Map that doesn’t appear to have happened.

A couple of suggestions to try

  1. separate the tire and wheel into their own objects.
  2. give your high def tread model some sidewalls to better match up with the low-poly version
  3. try using a cage to remake the normal map for the tread.

outside of that I’ll kick it over to @rszarka or @jakarta to see if they have a suggestion

5

Hi

Thanks for those suggestions. I’ll give them a go.

Cheers!

Dan