milanm wrote:Regarding my huge post about normal mapping issues, in the mean time, I've made some progress implementing normal mapping FROM SCRATCH using OSL.
Here's a video demonstrating some of the improvements to diffuse shading. I am simply using view direction to gradually reduce intensity of normal maps only in problem areas. The results are surprisingly good so far. In real world tests overall normal maps appear more "3D" (for lack of a better term) compared to what we have now using material normal map pin only.
I'm now adding more features to this OSL script and I'll be posting it here on the forums along with a bunch of other useful utility scripts for working with normal maps.
Also here's a research paper that offers a microfacet-based approach to solving this issue.
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/10/02/microfacet-based-normal-mapping-for-robust-monte-carlo-path-tracing/
Cheers
Milan
WOW, Milan that's very impressive, fixing Octane's normal map bug/limitation with OSL, you are my hero man !
And you even found an Algorithme for Otoy to actually fix it in Octane core Haha (I mean instead of the way it was supposedly "fixed" years ago by reducing normal map amplitude to 90 degres instead of 180)