Detail Normal Mapping - Shader Graph Basics - Episode 13
Вставка
- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- In this beginner shader tutorial, I show how to create a shader that applies a detail normal map in Unreal5 and Unity. Detail normal maps are great because they allow you to overcome texture resolution limitations and get sharp details on your meshes, even when you get up close.
Here's last week's video - Blending Normal Maps:
• Blending Normal Maps -...
And here's the playlist for the whole series:
• Shader Graph Basics
Here's the Quixel rock asset we're using:
quixel.com/meg...
Learn more!
• Detail Texture Shader ...
• Detail Textures: Quick...
Shader Book Recommendations
www.bencloward...
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Theme Music
Peace in the Circuitry - Glitch Hop
teknoaxe.com/Li...
Background Music
Speo - The Little Things
• The Little Things
#Unreal5 #shadergraph #normals
I'm starting to pivot from concept/2d artist to Technical Artist so I'm learning about shaders. I found this playlist and I'm really impressed this is free. I would have to pay a lot of money for a course that teaches you the fundamentales with such a level of detail. This is some seriously high quality level educational stuff. Thanks.
Watching your videos is making me feel I'm not a stupid teapot. You're the best teacher!
Really love all your tutorials. Each of them helps me appreciate the power of unreal engine more and more. Thank You!
Really great Tutorials Ben!!! Highly appreciate your work! Thank you so much for doing this!
You can also use the Constant Bias Scale node to do the subtract and multiply in a single node, however it is operated doing the Bias / Addition function first, then multiply. So you'll want Bias -0.5 then Scale 2
Great video Ben, thanks for the effort!
Doing a small uv offset with the detail map can help to hide the exact pixels and the feel of bilinear blend feel of the base texture. But the offset should only be like 50% of the pixel size of the base texture. It is essentially free and will in one step fix up the normals, color and roughness.
That's a pretty cool idea. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks again Ben! i look forward to the next video, also don't forget the video about smooth step please!
Yep - I haven't forgotten - I just got a little side tracked. :)
@@BenCloward hehe I know, but it's good, the normal mapping videos are helping me a lot too.
Thank You, Ben.
Wow! Impressive. 👍👍👍
hard that you cover ue and unity😊👍
You are awesome, thank you so much!
thanks, grate tutorial
Thanks 🙏
Be careful using DeriveNormalZ, it's doesn't have a have saturate before sqrt ( z = sqrt( 1 - ( x * x + y * y) ) )
(UE saturate before sqrt, Unity saturate dot product(code style things)) ((As I remember it's fine in DX9, but DX10+ produces NaN)).
Also worth mention about another formula for unpacking xy component of normal map -> NormalMap * 255.0/127.0 - 128.0/127.0.
Very cool!
Thanks Ben! I understand more and more about ue materials thanks to you. I've noticed from previous videos you use 3ds max as software. Is there a way to work with shaders in max like you do in Unreal? Like separating RGB components, world space vs object space textures etc? What about a series of video on that (maybe OSL too?). Hope you find It interesting. Anyway thank you so much!
Funny you should ask about that. 3ds Max uses a node-based shader editor called ShaderFX to create real-time shaders for the viewport. I helped to create it. I don't have plans to create a series on that, but it's pretty similar to the system used in Unreal.
@@BenCloward thanks for your reply! In max i usually use, as an example, a falloff map to simulate a fresnel term but i find It more intuitive to work like you do in Unreal. If you Say they work the same i'll give It a deeper look. Probably i ve been doing shaders wrong the whole time XD. Thanks Ben!
can you include the sample textures in the description of the video
How to generate albedo texture to Roughness and Metallic texture? I just find out Diffuse, Reflection(Specular), Bump, Displacement, Normal, Gloss Map and AO Map. And in this Granite Rock I don't know Mask Texture G Channel, what's F(fuzz)? Hope u explain it. TY
Good afternoon! Tell me how to use bump texture if there is no normal texture?
Thank you for this interesting lesson!!! The only part I was a bit confused about was when you have taken the RGB instead of the R & G component in the "Detail Map" to blend with the base normal map. Wasn't the blue channel for the roughness?
Yes, we're only using the red and green channels. The Derive Normal Z node only takes a float2 as input and I'm giving it a float3 - the RGB, so it automatically converts it to a float2 by throwing away the blue channel. This is why it's important to understand data types and know what Unreal does to convert them. I'm using a little bit of a shortcut here so I don't have to use as many nodes. Otherwise I would have to add in an append node after the texture sample and combine the red and green channels into a float2 and this method skips that step.
How to make detail normal?
In this video, is detail map calculated in shader all the time or only when we (crazily) zoom in the material?
It's being calculated all the time. In order to make it not calculate all the time, you would need to create a material/shader that doesn't use it and assign that to a lower LOD, or create a branch in the shader that switches based on distance.
love the tutorials but shaders are so confusing for me. Do Quixel assets come stock with this level of detail?
No. They come with very high resolution base textures, but if you want to add detail textures, you have to do that yourself.
Goldmine
Hi dear Ben. Because of your videos, I am an technical/environment artist in a small indie studio now, and we just released our fist alpha gameplay trailer. Ofcourse still learning. My favorite thing in this trailer is foliage sway system that I created learning from your videos. Just wanted to say thank you for your incredible channel. I remember how I asked what is texture sampling in comments of your video few years before and I can't imagine how much thing I learned from you. I recomend this channel in every and all places, where I meet with people learning shader stuff. Really thank you so much. And this is a trailer. Hope you like it. ))) Just watching your random videos to refresh things in my head right now. )))
ua-cam.com/video/vPrsxF82Cd4/v-deo.html
you could have the common courtesy of adding your engine to the title, I was all excited about a unity tutorial
All my videos in the last year show how to create the effects in both Unreal and Unity. Sometimes the Unity version is first, and sometimes the Unreal version is first. If you're seeing the Unreal version and you want to see it in Unity, just skip ahead a bit. I show these effects in both engines so that people will understand that there's nothing engine-specific about them. They're universal principles.