Normal mapping
Encyclopedia
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
, normal mapping, or "Dot3 bump mapping", is a technique used for faking the lighting of bumps and dents. It is used to add details without using more polygon
Polygonal modeling
In 3D computer graphics, polygonal modeling is an approach for modeling objects by representing or approximating their surfaces using polygons. Polygonal modeling is well suited to scanline rendering and is therefore the method of choice for real-time computer graphics...
s. A common use of this technique is to greatly enhance the appearance and details of a low polygon model
Low poly
Low poly is a term used to describe a polygon mesh in 3D computer graphics which has a small number of polygons. It is, however, a relative term, usually referring to meshes in real-time applications . That is to contrast them with meshes in animated movies and special effects of the same era...
by generating a normal map from a high polygon model. Normal maps are frequently stored as RGB images where the RGB components corresponds to the X, Y, and Z coordinates, respectively, of the surface normal
Surface normal
A surface normal, or simply normal, to a flat surface is a vector that is perpendicular to that surface. A normal to a non-flat surface at a point P on the surface is a vector perpendicular to the tangent plane to that surface at P. The word "normal" is also used as an adjective: a line normal to a...
.
History
The idea of taking geometric details from a high polygon model was introduced in "Fitting Smooth Surfaces to Dense Polygon Meshes"by Krishnamurthy and Levoy, Proc. SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974. The conference is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals...
1996, where this approach was used for creating displacement maps
Displacement mapping
Displacement mapping is an alternative computer graphics technique in contrast to bump mapping, normal mapping, and parallax mapping, using a texture- or height map to cause an effect where the actual geometric position of points over the textured surface are displaced, often along the local...
over nurbs. In 1998, two papers were presented with key ideas for transferring details with normal maps from high to low polygon meshes: "Appearance Preserving Simplification", by Cohen et al. SIGGRAPH 1998, and "A general method for preserving attribute values on simplified meshes" by Cignoni et al. IEEE Visualization '98.
The former introduced the idea of storing surface normals directly in a texture, rather than displacements, though it required the low-detail model to be generated by a particular constrained simplification algorithm. The latter presented a simpler approach that decouples the high and low polygonal mesh and allows the recreation of any attributes of the high-detail model (color, texture coordinates
Texture mapping
Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:...
, displacements
Displacement mapping
Displacement mapping is an alternative computer graphics technique in contrast to bump mapping, normal mapping, and parallax mapping, using a texture- or height map to cause an effect where the actual geometric position of points over the textured surface are displaced, often along the local...
, etc.) in a way that is not dependent on how the low-detail model was created. The combination of storing normals in a texture, with the more general creation process is still used by most currently available tools.
How it works
To calculate the Lambertian (diffuse) lighting of a surface, the unit vector from the shading point to the light source is dottedDot product
In mathematics, the dot product or scalar product is an algebraic operation that takes two equal-length sequences of numbers and returns a single number obtained by multiplying corresponding entries and then summing those products...
with the unit vector normal to that surface, and the result is the intensity of the light on that surface. Imagine a polygonal model of a sphere - you can only approximate the shape of the surface. By using a 3-channel bitmap textured across the model, more detailed normal vector information can be encoded. Each channel in the bitmap corresponds to a spatial dimension (X, Y and Z). These spatial dimensions are relative to a constant coordinate system for object-space normal maps, or to a smoothly varying coordinate system (based on the derivatives of position with respect to texture coordinates) in the case of tangent-space normal maps. This adds much more detail to the surface of a model, especially in conjunction with advanced lighting techniques.
Since a normal will be used in the dot product calculation for the diffuse lighting computation, we can see that the {0, 0, –1} would be remapped to the {128, 128, 255} values, giving that kind of sky blue color seen in normal maps (blue (z) coordinate is perspective (deepness) coordinate and RG-xy flat coordinates on screen). {0.3, 0.4, –0.866} would be remapped to the ({0.3, 0.4, –0.866}/2+{0.5, 0.5, 0.5})*255={0.15+0.5, 0.2+0.5, 0.433+0.5}*255={0.65, 0.7, 0.933}*255={166, 179, 238} values (
). Coordinate z (blue) minus sign flipped, because need match normal map normal vector with eye (viewpoint or camera) vector or light vector (because sign "-" for z axis means vertex is in front of camera and not behind camera; when light vector and normal vector match surface shined with maximum strength).Calculating Tangent Space
In order to find the perturbation in the normal the tangent space must be correctly calculated.Most often the normal is perturbed in a fragment shader after applying the model and view matrices.
Typically the geometry provides a normal and tangent. The tangent is part of the tangent plane
and can be transformed simply with the linear
Affine transformation
In geometry, an affine transformation or affine map or an affinity is a transformation which preserves straight lines. It is the most general class of transformations with this property...
part of the matrix
(the upper 3x3). However, the normal needs to be transformed by the inverse transpose. Most applications will want cotangent to
match the transformed geometry (and associated uv's). So instead of enforcing the cotangent to
be perpendicular to the tangent, it is generally preferable to transform the cotangent just like the
tangent. Let t be tangent, b be cotangent, n be normal, M3x3 be the linear part of model matrix, and V3x3 be the linear part of the view matrix.
Normal mapping in video games
Interactive normal map rendering was originally only possible on PixelFlow, a parallel renderingParallel rendering
Parallel rendering is the application of parallel programming to the computational domain of computer graphics. Rendering graphics can require massive computational resources for complex scenes that arise in scientific visualization, medical visualization, CAD applications, and virtual reality...
machine built at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
. It was later possible to perform normal mapping on high-end SGI
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
workstations using multi-pass rendering and framebuffer
Framebuffer
A framebuffer is a video output device that drives a video display from a memory buffer containing a complete frame of data.The information in the memory buffer typically consists of color values for every pixel on the screen...
operations or on low end PC hardware with some tricks using paletted textures. However, with the advent of shader
Shader
In the field of computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that is used primarily to calculate rendering effects on graphics hardware with a high degree of flexibility...
s in personal computers and game consoles, normal mapping became widely used in proprietary
Proprietary software
Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...
commercial
Commerce
While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...
video games starting in late 2003, and followed by open source games in later years. Normal mapping's popularity for real-time rendering is due to its good quality to processing requirements ratio versus other methods of producing similar effects. Much of this efficiency is made possible by distance-indexed detail scaling, a technique which selectively decreases the detail of the normal map of a given texture (cf. mipmapping), meaning that more distant surfaces require less complex lighting simulation.
Basic normal mapping can be implemented in any hardware that supports palettized textures. The first game console to have specialized normal mapping hardware was the Sega Dreamcast. However, Microsoft's Xbox
Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...
was the first console to widely use the effect in retail games. Out of the sixth generation consoles
History of video game consoles (sixth generation)
The sixth-generation era refers to the computer and video games, video game consoles, and video game handhelds available at the turn of the 21st century. Platforms of the sixth generation include the Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Microsoft Xbox...
, only the PlayStation 2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
's GPU lacks built-in normal mapping support. Games for the Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
and the PlayStation 3
PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
rely heavily on normal mapping and are beginning to implement parallax mapping
Parallax mapping
Parallax mapping is an enhancement of the bump mapping or normal mapping techniques applied to textures in 3D rendering applications such as video games...
. The Nintendo 3DS
Nintendo 3DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo. The autostereoscopic device is able to project stereoscopic 3D effects without the use of 3D glasses or any additional accessories. The Nintendo 3DS features backward compatibility with Nintendo DS series software, including Nintendo DSi software...
has been shown to support normal mapping, as demonstrated by Resident Evil Revelations and Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater.
See also
- Texture mappingTexture mappingTexture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:...
- Bump mappingBump mappingBump mapping is a technique in computer graphics for simulating bumps and wrinkles on the surface of an object. This is achieved by perturbing the surface normals of the object and using the perturbed normal during lighting calculations. The result is an apparently bumpy surface rather than a...
- Parallax mappingParallax mappingParallax mapping is an enhancement of the bump mapping or normal mapping techniques applied to textures in 3D rendering applications such as video games...
- Displacement mappingDisplacement mappingDisplacement mapping is an alternative computer graphics technique in contrast to bump mapping, normal mapping, and parallax mapping, using a texture- or height map to cause an effect where the actual geometric position of points over the textured surface are displaced, often along the local...
- Reflection (physics)Reflection (physics)Reflection is the change in direction of a wavefront at an interface between two differentmedia so that the wavefront returns into the medium from which it originated. Common examples include the reflection of light, sound and water waves...
External links
- Understanding Normal Maps
- Introduction to Normal Mapping
- Blender Normal Mapping
- Normal Mapping with paletted textures using old OpenGL extensions.
- Normal Map Photography Creating normal maps manually by layering digital photographs
- Normal Mapping Explained
- xNormal A closed source, free normal mapper for WindowsMicrosoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...