I think it can be related to the color space of the normal map. I made a test with image textures and it worked with the color space set to non-color on the left image and with color space set as sRGB show the same mesh problem on the right image https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uY768SkDMYl4tkFd0gD9fnFwrUXNW3f_/view?usp=sharing
Shade smooth is on.
What I’m doing wrong? There is no color space option in the noise node. Any thoughts?
Thx.
A noise texture does not give you a normal map image! Change the normal map node to a bump node, use factor instead of the colour output of your noise texture and plug it into the height socket of the bump node.
The bump node will give you normals as output.
Normal data and height data is non colour. Normal map images (and height map images) have to be set to non colour to work properly.
This is the setup to get normals from a noise texture:
These are the normals the bump node is outputting
note: although they look colourful the principled shader treats them as non colour data because they come out of a normals output.
You will get problems in cycles (not eevee) with shadows if your sphere is low poly, as the normals are applied “per face” you get shadow termination, for an object with a normal map you will have to subdivide the sphere a 2-3 times to get rid of it.
So yes cycles, smooth shade and normal maps are not good, In am sure they will fix this one day.
Based on what you shared so far, I couldn’t reproduce the problem
It doesn’t really look like a shadow terminator problem and Color Space should not even matter at this point (I think).
The subdivision worked in this sphere. The shadow terminator not.
I need to fix a problem in a mesh of a product I’m working. The contract won’t allow me to send the file, but the subdivision is not a solution to the mesh. It’s an imported FBX and the mesh is already too complex. It worked, but I really need to find another solution. I tried to recalculate normals, reset… etc. Nothing worked.
This is what the same material look like in the product https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RMbQkx_mupHBQBkJFA_XPYyufM6cOvrX/view?usp=sharing
I’m not sure what you did to the sphere before sending the file…as using a new sphere and applying for the material works just fine…but as far as your sphere I did this…
Used Lapacean Smooth on vertices 2x’s…shade smooth…No Subdivision Modifier, Auto Smooth OFF… Cycles Screen Render…
I just created a UV sphere without changing anything. It happens even with a quad sphere. But that’s not the problem. It’s happening with other objects too. Lapacean Smooth won’t work.
Maybe it’s my Blender. I will try a clean install later.
Or even better. I’ll try in my laptop too.
Sounds like a plan…You could also try a new Blend from Factory Defaults and append the file to see if that works…then also try appending the file into your current Blender preferences and see if things work…
I have just tried the same file (my version) in 3.2, I was in 2.93 before and in 3.2 there is no shadow termination!
So that seems to have been addressed in newer versions.
Installing a new Blender on my laptop did not help.
It’s driving me crazy. In some cases I could use a texture map instead of noise and using non-color solved the problem.
I guess it could be something related to the Color Space and the noise node. I need to do more tests with different nodes.
Nope… Just opened your file, edit mode…Laplacian smooth 2 iterations…I might have adjusted the shadow settings in the first one ( don’t remember…I tend to use a set number of defaults as my startup file)…
This time…only the smooth…that’s it…
Ok, I was not using the OP’s file, I was using the default low poly sphere (500 faces).
The OP’s sphere has 8192 faces.
mppackness
BUT in your file the sphere was not round, it looks like you subdivided it twice in edit mode with the smoothness value set to 0, it is like using the subsurf modifier with the “simple” option instead of “Camul-Clark”.
To fix I selected all in edit mode and in the mesh menu used the “to sphere” option.
Now your file will render smooth. (but the sphere is not low poly any-more.)
I do see the faces if I use a low poly sphere (the default 500 faces).
This is an issue as you say and is in the dev link you posted, hopefully they will fix it as it is a bit of a “game stopper”.
I do not think it is a colour space problem as the fac output is a value and does not have colour space, It looks like the bump node is just not taking smooth shading into account when calculating normals.
If it was just a sphere it will not be a problem. I could just subdivide it. But I can’t do this to many of the product meshes I work everyday. I’ll need to wait for the solution.
But for now I’ll keep using texture maps instead of noise/bump.
