Blender | Normals, Normal Maps, and Bump Maps Explained

Finally a video explaining "how it works" and not "how to do". If any of you can share some other ressources of this kind, it would be great ! 👍
Can't wait to watch more videos from you !

amazing, This video made my day

Thank you I was just making a procedural material and I realized I had no idea how to generate a normal map for it, this fixed the issue!

you earned a hard to earn subscribe

That was what I have been searching for for soooo long thank you. You almost got there but is there a way to use a normal and bump map, or is this simply not a thing or required as one cancels the use of the other?

PLease try to talk slowly! you are talking very fast~

awesome video! Thank you

THE BACKGROUND MUSIC IS JUST FUCING HEADIC

This video is soo helpful and well made, its crazy that you dont have more views and subs. You def deserve them.

You are soooo good. Want to see more videos...

earned a sub gg

This is a really good video, not everyone can explain stuff like this so well

Wait a minute, you do the music in your videos too?

Amazing video! I have taken away a lot of useful information from this, thank you!

cheers that is a good tutorial , thank you so much

Bump maps are easy for the user to mess with, but more costly for the renderer as it has to lookup neighbouring pixels in the map and calculate the normal. In a normal map, the normal comes directly from the color and no additional computations are necessary.
Normal maps can store a gradient with a single color that doesn't correspond to flat, whereas a bump map would require a gradient. Therefore bump maps may require higher resolution images and at higher bit depth to avoid banding effects to show up, especially at high zoom levels. Cubic interpolation can help, but it won't do magic.
Using normal maps the normals are independent on density; a 5 degree tilt will be 5 degrees no matter how dense you repeat it, but the height perception will vary instead. It's opposite for a bump map; put those peaks and valleys denser together and keeping the height, the normals will vary. Use ONLY normal maps whenever depicting known angles are critical.
Normal maps can be tricky as hell to manipulate (blend, rotate) if you want to do it correctly. Sure, simple overlay may work good enough if angles aren't critical, but it won't always work as intended if doing texture bombing, triplanar mapping, or you can't be bothered to setup proper UV space.

Personally I usually work with bump maps instead of normal maps; the hit on offline rendering isn't that critical for me, I (usually) can deal or work around the downsides, and they're just far easier to manipulate whenever I want to eliminate seams or texture repeats. I also like to randomize the look of the assets I use multiple times in a scene, so baking out a normal map just doesn't work that well for me. Normal maps are technically the better option result wise, but often convenience just wins for me.

that is just amazing, simple and full of info. Ty for this video

Mannnn you are great, keep up the good work!
Subscribed!!!

sir , you deserve more subscribes

i like your video, thank you, you are so smart!

I was searching for "blender bump maps", and the decision stood between this longer video, or the shorter one. I decided to give your video a chance, and earned you a new sub. I learned a lot of new things from this video, and got new ways to look at, and approach, bump maps. Thanks alot!

Highly underrated video, thank you for it!

Very useful video! You explained everything pretty clear. I hope you keep posting videos and your channel grows !! ❤❤

Keep it up! Really well explained video 👏

This was incredibly helpful. I've been messing around trying to learn Blender inconsistently for a few years now and I finally understand how this works. Thank you

damn dude only got 98 subs?

best explainer video for this I have found

thanks!

More pls

lifesaver!

OK. So, if I understand correctly, normal maps essentially take the geometry that pokes out of a plane and flattens it into a hologram as part of the texture. In the same way that a hologram can be seen from a bunch of different angles and show different shading depending on the direction and intensity of the light source, it cannot cast real shadows on anything around it that weren't captured as part of the holographic process that made the image. I guess another way to think of it would be like if the surface was made up of flat LCD panels (with absolutely perfect 180° viewing angles). You could make it so that those panels react to things like lighting and viewing angles with cameras and tracking and such to make the panels display a reasonably convincing illusion of depth that reacts to the viewer, but nothing can ever poke up past the surface of the screens used on each surface. This means that the different colors in a normal map are a bit like looking at an anaglyph 3D image (the old red and blue type of 3D) without the glasses. The more the color is distorted away from that flat, magenta/lavender-ish color, the more that the original protruding shape is being flattened down to a plane.

By contrast, a height/ displacement/ bump map can cast shadows, since it's essentially just a way of storing Z axis data in a flat image. Height and displacement maps are basically the exact same thing, the only difference being how the engine renders the same data. A height/ bump map uses the same sort of "hologram" method that keeps the surface flat, while a displacement map will actually poke out from the surface (and cause a bunch of geometry to be added)


Please correct my horrible interpretation of these concepts.

Awesome explanation! keep it up man.
Here's my subscribe :)

easy use bump, normal sometimes get wrong direction such as openGL type or direct x tipe if we download from internet. btw Good explanation

The quality of this video is insane, clean and simple explanation ,please keep the good work :). +1 sub

wow i like that tutorial- well structured, funny, and the editing is fancy

Simple explanation. One of the best videos on the topic. Also loved your style of presenting.
But hey, why did you stop posting? Want more videos from you mate.

Thank you for making this! Great and simple explanation!

the recap is great!!! thanks

Phenomenal tutorial. Thank you.

Wow! Nice video!

wow Dude_ this explanation was awesome. Can't believe this hasnt got more views

I hope you get big on here 👌👌
Lovely simple and clean explanation 👌👌

quality video

very good explanation!