Hello guys!
Full beginner to VFX right here, I’m making an attempt to grasp how regular maps play a component in shading a smoke texture to be extra life like in unreal, it is going to be nice if anybody can shed some gentle on this subject, or present studying supplies/hyperlinks.
From what I perceive, the fabric shading mannequin must be set to default lit, and volumetric directional must be enabled to permit a traditional map to be learn.
Enjoying round with paragon smoke textures and my very own easy materials, plugging within the regular map does nothing to the fabric in preview, e.g. lighting doesn’t change, not that I can observe in any case.
Additionally paragon grasp supplies, it seems like they’d regular maps however one way or the other it’s being disabled?
So was questioning if regular map issues in any respect to the shading of those animated smoke textures in any manner, and the way I can observe the adjustments within the shading of the feel, when utilizing regular maps.
Thanks!
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AFAIC, shading the smoke particle texture with regular map isn’t but an industrial norm, some video games do, however many don’t. My hunch is that right this moment’s 3A video games universally use flipbook smoke textures made in Embergen or Houdini, the bottom coloration texture itself can get very giant for correct sharpness, including an extra regular map can be too taxing on texture stream finances, so many sport devs would like to maintain the smoke particle materials so simple as potential, many would simply use volumetric NONdirectional.
As for correct lighting for smoke particle in UE, a less expensive possibility when working with volumetric directional is to allow “Generate Spherical Particle Normals” which precisely provides the billboard particle a ball like regular so it doesn’t look completely flat when reacting to lighting. (Unity additionally has an analogous built-in spherical regular possibility in its particle system renderer.)
A bit digress, but it surely’s a disgrace that we will’t use Pixel Depth Offset (in direction of digicam), which is unavailable to translucent materials, to enhance the intersection of the particle billboard with opaque meshes.
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