Hi Experts,
I was trying to add some Anisotropic reflection effects to my silver coin model, when anisotropy is enabled, it looks flat and the normal map effects (bumps) were not visible. Below is my sample in the playground:
https://playground.babylonjs.com/#NKJLSP
When disabled the anisotropy, the bumps can be seen. Is it possible to have anisotropy and normal map effects at the same time when using pbr materials? Thanks in advance for any advice.
KWL
They are actually both active at the same time just the effect feels less pronounce as the normal are not all pointing in the same direction.
without aniso:
with aniso:
I would also advise in this case to create your tangents as you want (@PatrickRyan might comment on this)
@kwl, I did a video a while back about anisotropic reflections on a mesh and how to author for them. It contains some information about tangents and why they are important in this process. But I think what you are seeing is more a factor of the light in the scene rather than the anisotropic reflections.
I updated the scene lighting a bit to bring out more of the normal map in your scene. One of the main issues was that the directional light was far too bright and the light was flattening out all the detail when you viewed the mesh at the direct reflection angle of the light. Since the light was pointing largely downward, you hit that angle quite often while looking at the model. Changing the angle to a shallower angle from horizontal helps pop the normal detail more. And reducing the overall intensity of the light also helps not blow out the detail.
When you reach the direct reflectance angle of the directional light with the camera, there is still a little flattening happening, but since the overall intensity is lower, it only happens in a small area of the coin and you can see the impact of the normal in other parts of the coin:
To help with overall illumination, I also bumped up the intensity of the environment light to 1.5 to make up for some reduction in the overall brightness of the scene. It’s also good to note that this particular environment has no lighting overhead, it’s all light panels placed along the perimeter of the environment with nothing coming from above. Changing out the environment can also have a big impact on the scene:
Depending on your end use, you will likely have to balance all of the parameters from geometry to lighting to get the render to look the way you envision it. Hope this helps.
Thanks PatrickRyan and Sebavan, I will try again by varying the light intensity and direction, environment intensity and change the environment map.
