You can reach us via e-mail at the following addresses:

• General Information: info@knaldtech.com
• Support: support@knaldtech.com
• Sales: sales@knaldtech.com

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Below you will find the minimum and recommended system requirements for Lys.

Minimum Supported System Requirements¹⁾

• Windows 7 64bit/ Windows 8 64bit
• Intel or AMD dual core 2.0 GHz CPU
• 2GB of RAM
• OpenGL 4.3 compatible GPU with 1GB of VRAM
• (Applicable AMD and nVidia GPUs with latest drivers currently supported)
• (Available VRAM may limit working texture sizes – see documentation for details)
• 200MB of Free Hard Drive Space

Recommended Supported System Requirements

• Windows 7 64bit/ Windows 8 64bit
• Intel or AMD quad core 3.0 GHz CPU
• 8GB of System RAM
• OpenGL 4.3 compatible GPU with 2GB of VRAM or more
• (Applicable AMD and nVidia GPUs with latest drivers currently supported)
• (Available VRAM may limit working texture sizes – see documentation for details)
• 1GB of Free Hard Drive Space

Here are some things you can try that might help you out:

• Ensure you have a compatible graphics card and that your system meets the minimum requirements. Knald requires an OpenCL compatible GPU. If you are not sure if your card is compatible, you can find a partial list of conformant GPUs here. If your GPU was made after 2008, there is a good chance it is OpenCL compatible.
• Check that you have the latest drivers for your GPU. Many issues can be resolved by simply installing the latest drivers for your graphics card. You can get the latest Nvidia drivers here and the latest AMD/ATI drivers here.

If you are still having issues, please contact us! You can reach us via e-mail at: support@knaldtech.com

To get the best results from Knald we suggest that you follow a small number of recommendations to ensure that the quality of the processed maps is as high as possible.

The bit depth of the images that you use in Knald have a large impact on the quality of the processed maps. Unfortunately, 8bit images have extremely low precision due to the relatively small number of values that can be represented per channel.

As a result of this limited precision, it can be difficult to reproduce variations of angle and slope with acceptable accuracy. This limitation of 8bit height maps may become apparent in the form of banding. These artifacts may not be immediately noticeable on Normal maps, however they are still present and may reduce the accuracy and fidelity of Knald’s output.

The maximum amount of unique values per channel for each bit depth is listed below:

• 8bit Integer: 256 Values
• 16bit Integer: 65536 Values
• 32bit Integer: 4294967295 Values
• 16bit Float: 65504 Values
• 32bit Float: 4261412864 Values

We recommend that you use the highest bit depth possible in whatever source images are to processed by Knald. If your current pipeline is restricted to 8bit, you can export the final map as 8bit from within Knald once the processing has been completed. You will always get more accurate results by authoring source images in higher bit depths and only converting to your target format (eg: 8bit) during Knald’s export.

For production-quality results we recommend using at least 16bit source images whenever possible.

While Knald can be used on any OpenCL compliant graphics card, you will get faster (though identical) results if you use a more powerful card.

Using an Alpha channel on imported Normal/Derivative may substantially increase the quality of your results in cases where the image UVs are anything other than simple planar unwrap to a quad.

All areas within the black area of an Alpha channel will be pinned and interpreted as flat. (128, 128, 255) Knald will assume these areas have no variance in normal information and will be processed as a flat plane. Typically, using the Alpha channel that is generated automatically when baking will be sufficient. However, useful and interesting results may be achieved using gradients and other variants aside from hard opacity.

Using an incorrect background color on imported Normal/Derivative maps will always significantly decrease the quality of your results in cases where the source image’s Alpha channel is either unused or not present.

Never use White or Black as your background color for these maps!

The correct colurs that should be used are as follows:

• Normal map: 128, 128, 255 / #8080ff
• Derivative map: 128, 128, 0 / #808000

In the case of any of these issues, please check the following:

• The amount of VRAM that your GPU has. The size of the image which Knald can process successfully is limited to the amount of VRAM that it takes to process, so using a very large image (4096² and above) may result in issues. Most modern graphics cards have at least 512MB of VRAM and therefore should be able to process a 2048² texture with ease. If you have more than 1GB of VRAM, you should be able to process a 4096² texture.
• Running multiple instances of Knald. Due to the amount of GPU VRAM required to process images within Knald, it is currently not recommended to run more than one instance of the program as VRAM may become exhausted. Rebooting your PC may free up stuck resources and can release VRAM which was being used by other applications and/or contended erroneously due to driver and/or application bugs.

Striations such as these are often due to the bit depth of your source images being too low. As a result of this limited precision, it can be difficult to reproduce variations of angle and slope with acceptable accuracy.

We suggest the following solutions to fix these issues:

• Use at least 16bit source images wherever possible and then export them at a lower bit depth if necessary.
• Use the ‘Enable Noise Reduction” option which is found within the Integrator panel in the Main tab. This will not give you identical results to using higher precision images and results in a softer overall image, but is a reasonable solution if using if your images are restricted to 8bit.
• Toggle the ‘Tileable’ check box in the General group under the Main tab. If a map is set to tilable incorrectly, it may result in errors around the borders of the image.

This is a side-effect of Knald applying the integrated height map to your mesh. Sadly, it is not currently possible for Knald to generate perfectly correct values around the UV islands (which are typical if the normal map was baked) resulting in the possibility of minor visual aberrations when applying the exported height maps to UV containing meshes.