WZ4 Question: Yellow ops do not support Normal maps?

[Skinnytorus]

Hi,
I was experimenting with a simple ocean simulation and faced an unexpected problem: BlowNoise op doesn't show normal maps. I checked further and saw that all yellow ops with a mod material on input omit normal maps on output.

So, I just wanna know if this is a bug or a deliberate trick to avoid extra system load? And I wonder if it's possible to enable (or force?) normal maps for the yellow ops in the source code? Thank you.

[rygorous]

Sorry for taking a while to answer.

This is neither a bug nor a trick to reduce system load (for all practical purposes, normal maps are basically free these days). We use tangent-space normal mapping, which requires tangent-space basis vectors per vertex. The vertex format used in BlowNoise (and several other ops) only has a normal, not a tangent vector, and hence doesn't support normal mapping.

This is fixable, but it requires changes to the code that are a bit more substantial than simply toggling a flag. I'll add it for BlowNoise, any other ops where you want this?

[rygorous]

Okay, it's in. I'll close this bug, just open new issues for any other ops where you want this :)

[Skinnytorus]

Yey! Many thanks for that!