Shader Fundamentals - Normal Mapping

what a brilliant explanation....well done

Amazing video, best tutorial I could find on here that explains normal maps

Excellent yes I understand everything now thank you

Maaaan, thank you for finally describing this in a way I can understand. I could never understand why a "flat" normal map was 0,0,1, but makes total sense now when you say we're multiplying the normal map values with the tangent/bitangent/normal.

I'm a bit late, but your definition of the dot product is only true for unit vectors. The dot product of two like vectors is the square of their shared length. That being said, normals will of course be unit vectors, but I mention this for the sake of accuracy.

you explained dot product and I was like "cool I wondered what exaclty dot product was doing" then you said vector to a lightsource from a vertex and it was like the techno wizzardry that is how 3d models are lit became clear.

Really Great!!

Why can’t we just use the normal value instead of having to calculate the tangent value?

What a well explained video…….What ?

Just watched your entire Shaders videos, thanks! I'm still super lost, but at least you encourage me to learn more about the subject :)

Awsome. This is a fantastic video, thanks a lot! Subscribed

"Tangential explanations" - I see what you did there

What code are you showing? Python? C++?

I came here to finally understand what's a normal map... and not only I didn't understand a word... but now I am even more afraid to dig in. Yes, I had problems at school and my maths level are a that of a child, but there are a lot of people like me... we also have the right to know!! Hahahaha...

I like the intro

Great stuff. New subscriber!!

worldnormal=red*tengent+green*bitengent+blue*normal(blue show how much normal want to use)

Thank you, this was very helpful.

lost me at the first 30 seconds

Wonderfully explained them on math. Thank you for this usefull clip.

Finally, feeling good about my year of Linear algebra

My brain usage reached at 15%, while watching this.

How do you calculate the normal at a vertex? If a normal is usually found with a cross product, are vertex normals just averages of the normals of the faces around them?

I can't concentrate DK song too distracting.

great video !! Please keep uploading new videos

Gamma correction has barely nothing to do with human vision... That's a misconception / myth, and it's making me angry whenever I see it propagated further. Our eyes, just like a camera's sensors, record values in linear space. We see linear values. We need linear values. We never see gamma values.

The only reason for gamma correction is backwards compatibility with old CRT technology. Back then, the monitor tech was so bad that it was displaying darker values than those expected and supplied to the GPU (coincidentally, in a non-linear fashion). Which meant that a value of 120 was displayed as less than 100 (not accurate, but just for example). People figured out that by supplying higher values than originally intended, they could get the monitor to display the required brightness. To do that, they started to gamma encode values to higher values (which again, works in a non-linear fashion). By supplying these gamma encoded values, the monitor was (through the nature of it's cathode ray tube) capable of decoding those values to the required lowered ones (keep in mind that this decoding was an abstract, conceptual decoding. There were no actual mathematics performed by the monitor)

After the dawn of CRT technology and the birth of LCDs, monitors were finally able to correlate the GPU supplied data with on-screen brightness (which meant that 120 was 120 on the screen). The biggest issue, however, was that the ENTIRE INTERNET was filled with gamma encoded images, and backwards compatibility was required (there was no way to purge all the servers and change the standard to no gamma correction without making all images up to that point obsolete). "Why is that?" - you might (hopefully) ask. Well, if you try to display a gamma corrected (encoded) image on an LCD with gamma correction features disabled (gamma = 1.0), you'd get a very bright and washed up image (remember, gamma encoded / corrected values are higher than those intended).

LCD manufacturers figured that the only way to keep going forward was to cancel gamma correction from images at software + hardware level. The LCD has a LUT (LookUp Table) chip which is responsible for doing gamma expansion / decoding, effectively canceling gamma correction and displaying values as originally intended (basically doing, through mathematical means, the same thing that a cathode tube was doing naturally). To enable this decoding process, you need to set your monitor to a gamma of 2.2 (the number was chosen as an average between 2.0 - 2.4, during the old CRT days, because it was giving the best results for a wide range of monitors), because almost every artist is encoding using that value. Of course, panel quality is very important here, so a value of 2.2 might not provide the exact experience intended by the artist (the LCD panel might be bad at reproducing colors / have bad background lighting).

Basically, the entire process is like this: an image is created (values are in linear space) -> then gamma encoded (non-linear space) -> stored somewhere. Somebody comes along and downloads said image -> opens it -> (OPTIONAL STEP) if they want to alter the image, they have to do all their calculations by first decoding the image (getting it in linear space), then calculating, and after that re-encoding (back to non-linear space) -> gets sent to the GPU -> GPU sends it to the monitor -> the monitor uses its LUT chip to decode the image (linear space) -> image is displayed.

Gamma correction is at this point a useless vestigial artifact of a bygone era, on account of bad early tech.

very rich content...thank you... but,please show how to make and use normal maps correctly in unity so that we can get a 3d virtual shape from a 2d surface(texture)

the best part of this is . . . most users of 3D creation software don't have to understand one bit of what you said . . . but we are eternally grateful that people like you do.

thank you.

Normal map

This is your daily dose of Recommendation

You should really take more time to go a little bit into details, bec you obviously know what you are talking about, but pls explain it tahn what you show

Thank you.

is that DK country 2 music playing??

I feel like such a nerd understanding and feeling gratitude for this help

wut

hey nice video but is it possible to explain why more about the blueish purple color being that color? eg. when we divide 255/2 = 127.5 = results in 128 for Red and the Green Channel in the mid value but for the blue when we divide 255/1 = 255 we get a (128,128,255) value. SO my question is is 127.5 = 128 or does the dividing the R and G channels should be 256/2 = 128?
thanks

Please make videos using Unity's ShaderGraph and VFX to replicate Good looking Games.
and again your Content is Amazing!

This was extremely informative, and i'm not even using Unity, so though I filtered and saved for later, a lot of what you said, this helps me finally GET wtf normals are, why they're the colors they are (I was like, is there some standardized gamut everyone is using?) and HOW they work. even though directionality can change by app e.g. in Keyshot vs Blendr, there's plenty of transforms and toggles to fix em. my main confusion was why they were even necessary when you have a bump map, geometry, and in some cases a displacement map. FINALLY i feel a little less dumb today. :) thank you!

Anyone who understands what your saying doesnt need this tutorial.

Omg someone who explains shit. Not just saying we put this there and that there. This is how u explain things.

Great Stuff but very less information about Normal Mapping.

Thank you for that. I've been 3D modeling for years and never really got it till now. Keep it up!

hello, good videos. i want to translate this one to russian, and upload on my chanel, any suggestion?

Thank You, this was very informative to me as 3d artist. Now I see what I have to look for preparing normal maps to be used in Unity.

What in god's name are you going on about

Very educational! 👏

Honestly, I stopped seriously listening after 4 minutes.
There is a lot being explained, but you're 15 levels above most everyone else, and giving the people who are already at level 15 the grand tour. But, you aren't offering a ladder for most average people to ascend to your level.

TL;DR, if you already have in-depth knowledge of the terms used in the video, you had a ball and learned.

If you're just a random person who wanted to know what those blue textures labeled ”NMp” in your game folder were, little to nothing was gained from this video.