Can anybody (preferably Lee cos he'd know for certain) answer a quick question about normal maps in Max (lord i wish they'd never called it that I'm constantly confused as to whether people are talking about GG or 3DS)?

I know that GGM uses DirectX normal maps, however i'd like a clarification of how the normal calculation is being used in Max. Is it a mikktspace workflow, or a non-mikktspace workflow ie does Max require tangent and birnormals in the mesh like Unity does, or does it require the mesh to not have tangents and binormals like Unreal because it computes it's own?

For anyone who is baking high poly normals onto low poly meshes to put into Max it's a pretty important workflow because if you get it wrong it can cause some seriously ugly shading issues on the entities.

probably best to ask Lee, although I can tell you this, there are no binormals/tangent info in the max DBOs.

OK so it looks like Wikid has gone the same route as UE and calculates tangents locally from the normal map instead of reading them from the mesh data and mixing them with the normal map, good to know.

@ Belidos: Good question for the next stream (if any)
BOTR thanks for clarifying, never mind about it, just worry about Y or -Y, in normal maps for GGMax.

Yeah for normal maps all you need to worry about is DX or oGL formats, that's a given. What i'm talking about is the built in mesh data for normals which is a whole different kettle of fish.

I've got your point, it looks like GGMax has covered both cases.