25 - Maya 2015 - Assign the Normal Map
Now that we have a normal map we will want to see how it looks inside of Maya. In order to do so we will need to access the attributes of our rope material and assign the normal map to it. As stated in a previous video, a normal map is just three bump maps layered on top of one another. Since a normal map is three bump maps we can apply the normal map to the bump map attribute of our rope material.
When assigning a normal map to a material it is important to set the normal map as a tangent space normal map. Just about every time you work with a normal map for a game asset you will most likely be using a tangent space normal. Assigning the normal map works much like it does when assigning the diffuse map as it just requires a file selection.
It is highly recommended that when working with normal maps you run a test render. When running the test render make sure to set your render type to Maya Hardware 2.0 in order to get a more accurate representation of how the object will appear inside of a game engine. There really will not be much of a difference between what you see in the viewport versus what you see in the render. Even though this is the case it is still a good idea to run the test render in order to check for any details that you might not notice within the viewport.
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