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In 3D modeling, surfaces are represented by polygons. Lighting calculations are performed based on the geometry of these polygons in the same way an artist would use shading techniques to mimic three dimensions. This approach works very well; however, it can get computationally intensive, limiting the overall level of detail possible. Normal mapping provides a great, lightweight solution by modifying the way light interacts with a surface without altering the underlying geometry.
Normal maps store information about a surface in the form of a texture image. By encoding surface normal in a texture, normal maps can simulate the appearance of surface detail, such as bumps, scratches, wrinkles, and more, without adding complexity to the geometry below.
Normal maps are calculated during rendering using the modified surface normal from the normal map. Because these calculations are less computationally intensive, high levels of detail can be accomplished, even in real-time, making normal maps a popular technique used by video game developers.
You will see normal mapping employed not only in scenarios when hardware constraints are extremely important like video games, which require scenes to be rendered in real-time for the gamer, but also in computer-animated movies, architectural visualization, and product design.
1. 3D modeling software: Tools like Blender, Maya, ZBrush, and substance-3d-modeler are used to create the models that will be used for normal mapping. There are many great software solutions which all bring their own approaches to modeling and sculpting.
3. Normal map generators: Normal map generation software helps create normal maps from high-resolution geometry or texture information. Tools like xNormal, CrazyBump, or Substance 3D Designer can generate normal maps based on various inputs.
4. Game Engines: Game engines like Unreal Engine and Unity have built-in support for normal mapping. These engines provide necessary tools and rendering capabilities to take advantage of normal maps. They are equally great for creating renders as they are creating gaming experiences.
5. Shader programming languages: Understanding shader programming languages like HLSL (High-Level Shading Language) or GLSL (OpenGL Shading Language) can be useful for creating custom shaders that take advantage of normal mapping. These languages allow developers to define how lighting interacts with normal and other texture maps to achieve amazing visual effects.
This list may not be all inclusive, but it offers creators a great place to start in forming a foundational understanding of normal mapping and how to implement them in real-time rendering environments.
4. Reusability: Normal maps can easily be applied to different models, allows artists and developers to reuse them across multiple assets. This saves time, effort, and final size of a product.
5. Interactive lighting effects: Normal mapping enhances the interaction of light with a model, allow for dynamic 3D lighting effects, such as specular highlights, shading variations, and more accurate reflections.
1. Limited geometry alteration: Normal maps only affect the appearance of surface details and cannot modify the geometry. The illusion they create can often be useful, though sometimes other techniques may be necessary when actual modification of geometry is required.
2. Creation and editing: Creating high-quality normal maps can be difficult and requires specialized knowledge and software. Editing normal maps can be difficult due to the intricate nature of the data.
3. Texture space limitations: Normal maps require additional texture space since they are typically stored as RGB images. This can impact the overall memory usage and may require careful optimization in some instances.
Despite some limitations, normal maps are the most effective technique for enhancing the visual quality and realism of 3D models in real-time. Normal mapping offers a healthy balance between performance and visual fidelity, making it an invaluable tool in 3D texturing and rendering.
Normal are created using an RGB (red, green, and blue) image, where each color channel in the image represents the X, Y, and Z component of the surface normal at each texel of the map. This means a normal map has three channels, with each containing positive or negative values.
By applying a normal map during rendering, the surface normals of the 3D model are modified based on the information stored within the map, resulting in lighting and shading effects that create the illusion of intricate surface details.
I've got a 1 month old Macbook Pro M3 Max with 64gb RAM and an up-to-date version of Sonoma running. It cost me nearly $8,000 and the Indesign experience is hopeless. It's only marginally faster than the 2020 Intel i9 32GB machine that I upgraded and has far more bugs. The upgrade specifically to get better performance in Indesign so far has been a waste of money. Desperately hoping that future releasees of Indesign are compatible with the newest hardware.
1) Text boxes that contain a price, e.g. $7,099 when viewed in Normal view, change to $0,000 (as per the template I started creating the document) when viewed in Preview, triggered using the W shortcut. See before and after from movie I took of it. I'm sure you can undestand how this could be a frightening bug when sending out press ads that are seen by millions of readers. The issue did not occur in the same file once I'd quit Indesign and restarted.
2) There are a number of performance issues. Zooming in/out using various methods is not responosive, screen redraw when using the hand to pan around the layout is laggy or glitchy, switching between open documents is slower than my old Mac, duplicating pages in the Pages palette crashes Indesign every time. I could go on.
5) I'm interested to hear what bottlenecks users need to address to get the software to run nicely on premium hardware. My documents are not complex, generally no more than 4 pages and based on templates I've been using for 10 years.
I know it doesn't help, but I can sympathise with some of the problems you're having. I also upgraded to a new laptop relatively recently, with Sonoma already installed. I daily face screen redraw issues, flashing graphics when I try to select them or move them, the screen turning completely black, etc. I'm in New Zealand so also paid a lot for my Macbook Pro M2 Max late last year.
As far as your scary changing text issue goes. I assume you will be sending a PDF to the papers, so you should be OK to trust your final output PDF. Although this doesn't solve the frustrating bug you're seeing, I guess fairly regularly creating press-ready PDFs will let you know if the problem is actually affecting your file or whether it's just some weird screen redraw bug.
There have been various threads on here mentioning turning rulers off and/or switching the GPU on or off, but unfortunately none of the solutions work for me. I too would be very interested to know about any InDesign-related bottlenecks I can address to get things running smoother.
Templates are always minefields. IME, they end up costing more time fixing problems and "trying to read the designer's mind" than they save in the first place. The problem could be something exceedingly simple, or a complicated mess caused by trying to get too convoluted and tricky with layers, styles, etc. There may be no good solution beyond having a pro look at the file; we could guess and try for days (and have, in the past) before finding out it's a locked-layer problem or a GREP Style failure or something else esoteric.
Okay, AUS$ explains some of that shocking price, but I'll boil down a lot of side arguments to this: InDesign is still a single-core app, so inflating CPU system power past the modest does not (right now or for the foreseeable future) add performance. Adequate RAM and decent GPU power do... and you may want to turn off GPU acceleration, as it seems to cause more problems on Macs than it boosts performance. In short, ID works very well on relatively modest hardware (muscular but not extreme) as long as there's adequate RAM and no file/networking bottlenecks.
AFAIK, most of the performance issues you note are related to the Sonoma incompatibilities. If you can't roll back to the last version on a new system, you may have to live with the issues until Adobe and Apple work out the problems. (It's been some time, so I gather the problems are not trivial.)
If you think Figma or Canva will ever reach ID's level of publication power, you're welcome to wait for those miracles. At some point, these largely amateur-focused, template-based, online-doc (and quick print) tools may become the basic workbench for that subset of work, but I have a ca. 1965 story about box Brownies being just as good as Leicas, too.
My old machine was a 2020 Macbook Pro with an Intel chip i9 chip, not Windows. It was constantly running out of ram at 32GB and the fan was constantly running as it often got up to 80C (180F). My business also changes over hardware for financial/tax reasons.
Other designers in my studio have M1 and M2 Macbook Pros with maxed out CPU/GPU & 64gb RAM and, other than the known issues like the screen explosions, they run ID much faster than my old 2020 MBP, and sadly more reliably than my new M3. They are on Ventura and wont' be updaing to Sonoma.
I'm keen to hear what you think I'm doing wrong with my setup other than having and OS that's 6 months old and expecting ID to run on it? I've loaded 4 typefaces outside of what comes with the OS. I'm working off the inbuilt SSD. Other designers in my studio are all using the same .indt files that I'm using without any major issues.
I just have to ask: what's the exact version of your macOS? Sometimes "up-to-date version" turns out to not to be such. macOS 14.3 solved the display issues you describe for most users (although some users do report that it didn't make any difference).
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