Why normal map make everything either go dark or bright

[wanton onyx]

geographic latitude is the angle of the sun. its going dark or bright because it's just shadows from where the sun is

[quiet sorrel]

You can add light....

[steep wind]

** You are now Level 1! **

[vital mason]

what should I do then, any idea?

[wanton onyx]

gui.lightinfluence=0

[vital mason]

uhhh it's a surface appearance, should I make it into editablemesh instead?

[vital mason]

also, don't surface gui have no normal map?

[wanton onyx]

why surface appearance for a flat texture on a part

[vital mason]

because it have a normal map option?

[wanton onyx]

oh wait are you asking simply what does a normal map do

coz ye it is related to lighting

[vital mason]

yeah, that's legit what I was asking about. Why it made full shadow or full brightness

I need it to make a certain part dark at a certain time of the day

[wanton onyx]

normal maps are meant to simulate small detail geometry without actually constructing additional geometry, like if something has a small shallow indented or beveled curve on it, you'd draw that in a normal map and it'll look like it has a small part of the mesh sticking out from all angles due to it being a simple trick of lighting, highlights, and shadows.

and fun related fact, if there was no lighting in the 3d scene, everything would be black.

or perfectly flat - lighting is what creates the illusion of depth

is why in raycaster games like doom, things further away are slightly darker and things closer are slightly brighter to give depth perception

[vital mason]

Like ts guy did it, I dont know how

[wanton onyx]

yea if the shading changes depending where the light is then its prob just a normal map + texture

[vital mason]

so how can I do that

just put a texture on then what?

[wanton onyx]

along with the normal map

?

surfaceappearance should merge them

[vital mason]

??

[vital mason]

that's what I did

[vital mason]

and it did that

[wanton onyx]

depends what your normal map looks like

maybe you got the axis wrong

[vital mason]

you can see the image on the third pic, which is the normal map

[wanton onyx]

🤷

those dont look the same

[vital mason]

well, I took it after moving around

it's a procedural generated map

[wanton onyx]

check it from different sun angles

geographical latitude and clocktime both change sun angle

also rotate the part

[vital mason]

it just either darken or heighlights the map

[wanton onyx]

try it without color map

https://devforum.roblox.com/t/weird-issue-with-normalmaps-on-editablemesh/3007520

its not your uvs, if it were then your color map would be off too

[vital mason]

w/o color map