Normals: tangent space or eye space?

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I've already implemented bump/normal mapping. Now I'm trying to go back and just do diffuse without a normal map.

Everything's in tangent space, I thought. So it should be fine to do this?

	vec3 lvec = normalize(light_vec);
float diffuse = max(dot(lvec, vec3(0,0,1)), 0.0); // Using (0,0,1) instead of normal map


But it seems the normals are in eye space, right?

	mat4 normalMat = transpose( inverse( model * view ) );
vec3 normalEyeSpace = vec3( normalMat * vec4(normalIn, 0.0) );
normalOut = normalize(normalEyeSpace);


And the light_vec (and lvec above) are in tangent space.

	vec3 n = normalOut; // Normal
vec3 t; // Tangent
vec3 c1 = cross( normalOut, vec3(0.0, 0.0, 1.0) );
vec3 c2 = cross( normalOut, vec3(0.0, 1.0, 0.0) );

if( length(c1)>length(c2) )
{
t = normalize(c1);
}
else
{
t = normalize(c2);
}

vec3 b = normalize(cross(n, t)); // Binormal

vec3 tmpVec = sundirection;
light_vec.x = dot(tmpVec, t);
light_vec.y = dot(tmpVec, b);
light_vec.z = dot(tmpVec, n);


The problem is that the shadow shifts when I rotate the camera. What do I compare/dot the lvec with in the first code to get the diffuse factor?

Edited by polyfrag

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I think I got it. I have to calculate the normal matrix using only the model matrix, to get the normal in world(?) space.

	mat4 normalMat = transpose( inverse( model ) );
vec3 normalWSpace = vec3( normalMat * vec4(normalIn, 0.0) );
normalOut = normalize(normalWSpace);
Edited by polyfrag

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you can also just supply the rotation matrix, or just use the mat3 part of the view matrix

this 'trick' requires that your view matrix is simple, as in, it's only rotated and translated

this is because you need to multiply your normal by a matrix that produces unit length vectors, and rotation-matrices (among others) do that

since your view and rotation matrix contains the rotation of your camera,

you can rotate your normal by rotating it by the mat3 part of your view matrix:

vec3 normal = mat3(matview) * in_normal.xyz; // rotate to follow camera/view rotation

you can "remove" or "undo" that rotation by multiplying with the transpose:

vec3 backToNormal = normal.xyz * mat3(matview); // rotate back again

a simpler look at creating a tangent-space matrix:

// texture to local space matrix
vec3 binormal = cross(in_normal, in_tangent);
mat3 tbn = mat3(in_tangent, binormal, in_normal); // aka. tbn matrix

the good thing about the tbn matrix is that it is unit length, so you can use to convert something to tangent,
and vice versa, convert something from tangent to world space (it's world space because tangent and normal is in world space!)

vec3 textureNormal = texture2D(normaltexture, coord.st) * 2.0 - vec3(1.0);
vec3 normal = tbn * textureNormal;

also, use normalize() sparingly, simply because it's extremely costly
avoiding it like the plague in the fragment shaders is important, although sometimes it can't be helped
Edited by Kaptein

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