Displacement Modifier: Keep Normals option
When creating pre-displaced geometry for rendering systems like UE5's Nanite it is important to have the option to displace a surface without affecting its normals, since a normal map will typically be applied to the mesh in-engine.
Having both updated vertex normals AND a normal map applied in-engine results in overbent normals.
A neat way to adress this problem would be to provide an option in the Displace modifier to keep the pre-displaced normals (perhaps comparable to the Keep Normals checkbox in the Triangulation modifier).
3 Comments
Does this patch do what you want? It has been merged and will be included in blender 5.0.
Can't you set normals via a DataTransfer modifier from a undisplaced mesh?
yes but having it as an option in the displace modifier is much faster. kinda like the option to merge vertices in the array modiifer; you can do it with a weld modifier too but it saves a lot of time having it there already.