Bumpmap not aligning in specular highlights

[jeffcase]

MonkeyT, we share similar backgrounds indeed. You must remember Aldus PageMaker and Ventura Publisher from the sounds of it. I dragged the shop where I was working into DTP and had to adapt myself as well. I remember going to Seybold SF and seeing Photoshop introduced. What a paradigm shift that was for a camera jockey.

You've made much greater inroads into the 3D/CG world than I. Expanding from the 2D world to the 3D world was/is a challenge for this cowboy. I suppose if I would put more time into really learning things, I might be able to create 3D things better. But it always seems to be utilitarian somehow - adjunct to some app I'm working on. I spend most of my time in Xcode now. And that takes constant work to stay up to date with the changes that keep coming down the Apple pipe.

Anyway, I appreciate your engagement with my floundering. The info you sent is great. I had no idea what normalmaps were when I started this project. I understand them a much better now - well at least somewhat better anyway. So much to know in the CG world...!

 

[Vorsos]

Do you use falcon? There specular isn't used. It just does nothing. Use reflection instead.

As a minor clarification for others, Falcon ignores specular on the Material shader, but it does use specular on the superior PBR shader. For my purposes, Material seems vestigial since PBR was added, save only for special effects like an image transparent plane.

 

[MonkeyT]

For my purposes, Material seems vestigial since PBR was added, save only for special effects like an image transparent plane.

A lot of the transparent effects in the Material Shader can be recreated in PBR by applying them to the Alpha channel "W" of the Base Color property.

 

[Shotster]

Material seems vestigial since PBR was added, save only for special effects like an image transparent plane.

Thanks. There often seem to be a number of means to the same end, and I'm sure there are pros and cons to each, but I'd like to standardize on a workflow for my AR creation needs. It seems I need to become acquainted with the PBR shader, as I've read in a number of places that it's simpler and yields superior results.

 

[MonkeyT]

I'm not sure the PBR is simpler, but its range of available visible effects is definitely more broad than the standard Materials shader. I like the look of its output better, too.

I suspect that a lot of the quirks and oddities in the configuration and flow of Cheetah's tools come from the gradual evolution of Mac hardware - that a lot of options we now prefer to use all the time had a far more devastating impact on render speeds at the time they were originally implemented. Turning them off by default probably saved LOTS of time back then.

 

[Vorsos]

I concur. Cheetah's own renderer and material are still faster in most cases, and are a good 95% solution. PBR and Falcon are for when we have the time and need for 100% physical accuracy.

Thanks for the PBR transparency method, which I would not have guessed in an entire career. I was able to adapt it for alpha layer images as well:

 

[MonkeyT]

I was able to adapt it for alpha layer images as well:

Interesting! I have used a png-based image node with a transparency layer directly to PBR before, but it always seemed to result in a slightly rough, bit-mappy edge unless I made the image have a much higher resolution than I originally planned. This appears to result in a pretty clean edge.

Looks like more testing is in order.