oh wow thanks for pointing that out! I didn't actually catch that while making the node somehow even though I've made that mistake myself with normal maps in substance software. Since I spent a bit finding the correct signs of axes to use in the triplanar normal correction stuff, the normal correction in the shader was specifically geared towards directx normal maps instead of opengl/vulkan ones. It's a super easy fix but I'm so glad you caught it lol

@@krisp- thanks for reply, i wish someday all software will be able to detect these things automatically. or... dx normals would be dead at last ;D

@@soundsbeard would probably need metadata to check automatically :/ the only way to do it algorithmically would be to compare it against the gradient of the heightmap, but if you have the gradient of the heightmap you can just generate the normals on the fly anyway. I can get on board with killing dx normals though :3

@@krisp- ahahaah ;D dis is da wae. normals, generated from the height map might differ from those, baked from the sculpt. not that significantly may be, but algorithm based on checking normal map file with auto generated map from height sounds like a plan. may be this is exactly what UE uses under the hood (i've heard it detects map type on the fly). but i've never dived into it that deep. im just that Karen from the internet, whining around with 'you use wrong normal map type! you don't mark normal type in the filename! get me the manager!' ;D btw followed you on masto.

@@soundsbeard Yeah generating normals from height is essentially what the bump node does, just in a slightly different space :p the issue with that is you need triple the texture samples so normal maps are still generally better for realtime use. I appreciate the follow btw!

It depends what you mean by fidelity in this case, the height blending can be done with different geometric patterns. Different patterns may be more appropriate for different types of underlying textures depending on the scale of details within the map. Different shaped meshes may present those textures better or worse depending on where the seams happen to lie on the surface, which may also be a matter of scale as much as the pattern of seams. So I guess the quick answer is: it depends, but it would be nice to give people as much option as possible.

hexagonal tiling has some unique properties that actually allow for fewer texture samples when blending with neighboring cells compared to a square grid or geodesic grid! the cell blending itself ends up requiring only 3 texture samples per pixel :3