Render Normals...
Author
Hello all ^^
Firstly, I am still new to HLSL and this may seem completely obvious :P
Basically I want to render the normals of the vertices into a texture - to create a 'normal render map' - similar to a depth map but with the normals encoded into the texture..
My question is, does anyone know how I can encode a normal into a texture and then reconstruct the normal vector later from the texture?
Thanks in advance,
Adrian ;)
Hi,
A texture is an RGB pixel map... A vector is a tuple of 3 floats... Since a texture is composed of three (or four) floats inside HLSL, you can use the three colors to store the 3 vector component of your texture
pixel = (normal.x , normal.y, normal.z)
but there is one problem with domains... First, you'll have to normalize your normal vector (hence the name -- it's already normalized i assume)
But one problem remains, the normal components vary between -1 and 1, and a texture pixel have component between 0 and 1
You'll then just have to divide by two every component of your normal, making it vary between -0.5 and 0.5. You can then add 0.5 to every component to make it vary between 0 and 1
To do the inverse, just multiply by two, and subtract 1...
A texture is an RGB pixel map... A vector is a tuple of 3 floats... Since a texture is composed of three (or four) floats inside HLSL, you can use the three colors to store the 3 vector component of your texture
pixel = (normal.x , normal.y, normal.z)
but there is one problem with domains... First, you'll have to normalize your normal vector (hence the name -- it's already normalized i assume)
But one problem remains, the normal components vary between -1 and 1, and a texture pixel have component between 0 and 1
You'll then just have to divide by two every component of your normal, making it vary between -0.5 and 0.5. You can then add 0.5 to every component to make it vary between 0 and 1
To do the inverse, just multiply by two, and subtract 1...
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