Hi,

as I'm working on a new model for realt-time visualization I wish to explore normal and bump mapping. In particular, what I'd like to have is a quick reference table with those "magic values" that will work in almost every situations.

Of course, I don't believe in "magic values" to make your BEST rendering ever, but everyone knows that if you begin from a solid and quick start you can trigger and tune later your results to the top.

Now, the scene:

this is a very simple blender's scene, with six couples (half sphere + plane) showing the same shader per couple (total: 6 materials). Material's base is the same, what change are image source for test (normal map on the left, bump map on the right) and the value of "Normal" influence.

This is the raw render in Blender:

As you can see immediately, a normal map gives a better result and, most important, is almost the same as showed in Blender rendering; so you can get a perfect feedback of your work while making it.

Normal/Bump maps from Eat3D

Ciao,
Pietro