--- title: "Bump and Normal Mapping in V-Ray" canonical: "https://documentation.chaos.com/space/THEORY/116719716/Bump%20and%20Normal%20Mapping%20in%20V-Ray" format: markdown --- This article explains how bump and normal mapping works in V-Ray.    ## **What is Bump and Normal Mapping?** --- Bump and normal mapping are shading effects that add surface detail. Unlike displacement, which creates additional polygons, bump and normal mapping create surface alterations without modifying the underlying geometry. Displacement generates better detail than bump and normal mapping, but bump and normal mapping renders faster than displacement and consumes a lot less memory than displacement. Bump mapping uses a grayscale image to determine which point of the surface is a bump and which is a dent. It simulates light and shadow areas on the surface to create the effect. Darker colors make for a depth effect, while lighter colors correspond to bumps. Bump mapping offers a quick and efficient way to add surface detail. However, because of the different way it stores information, it generally offers lower-quality effect in comparison to normal maps. It offers less control and less precision over the shading effect. See below the bump map example for visualization of the effect. The normal map is a color image, where the red, green, and blue channels correspond to one vector axis in 3D space (tangent, bitangent, and normal). Since normal maps use all three directions in a given space, they interact with the scene lighting in a way giving more believable results than bump maps. Normal maps set the surface alterations considering the environment light in the scene, depending on the space used. See below a detailed explanation how normal maps are applied in different spaces.   VRayMtl and other materials offer bump and normal mapping parameters, where you can specify how the connected map is applied. Additionally, V-Ray offers the Normal map texture for further control and flexibility.   ## **Bump Map** --- ## **Normal Map in Tangent Space** --- --- ### **Example usage of normal map in tangent space**   The most versatile normal map space in terms of usage, is the tangent space. It can be used for small and large scale, moving and deforming objects.  For this example, a normal map in tangent space is used to add surface detail to the totem objects.     ## **Normal Map in Object Space** --- ## **Normal Map in World Space** --- ## **Normal Map in Screen Space** ---     ## **Notes** --- V-Ray for 3ds Max uses the DirectX format for normal maps. All other integrations use the OpenGL format. Keep this in mind when importing normal maps from a texture painting application, e.g. Substance Painter.