Derivative Maps

The Derivative maps within Knald are generated on the fly from the Height maps provided by The Integrator. They are adjustable in real time in terms of intensity via the Bump Scale slider.

You can also create Derivative maps quickly and efficiently from photographs, via pre-rendered Height via Knald's Color To Normals functionality and our world class baker.

Please see the Color To Normals & The Baker pages for more information.

Derivative Maps are a recent method of bump mapping that does not use tangent spaces. This has numerous advantages over traditional normal map based workflows¹⁾²⁾.

These are as follows:

• Reduces foot-print.
• Is much better suited for synthesized surfaces/tessellation.
• Does not distinguish between regular geometry and tessellation.
• Works with per pixel generated texture coordinates such as Tri-Planar Texturing.
• No issues regarding multiple standards for implementation of tangent space generation.
• Mirroring trivially works.
• No need to recalculate tangent spaces on meshes with complex geometric deformations.
• Better visually during texture magnification.

Normal/Derivative Settings

Flip Green: Here you can change the axis in the dropdown to match the Normal/Derivative maps for your engine or application as required. By default Knald is set to X+Y+Z+, so if you are using a Normal or Derivative map that differs from this configuration, you will need to change this setting. To change this setting check the Flip Green check box to save your choice.

Bump Scale: The global strength of the processed Normal and Derivative maps.

Derivative Map