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I'm trying to model my house using Blender. I'm stuck with trying to get a realistic tiled roof. When I follow a tutorial online, I think I'm doing all the correct steps in the Shading area, but it still looks flat in the the Cycles render.

This is the texture I'm trying to use https://texturehaven.com/tex/?t=roof_09 (although I will need to find a better one for my final design!).

But it looks totally flat:

enter image description here

What might I be doing wrong?

Here is my .blend file: http://files.staging.x-rm.com/nick/house5b.zip

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  • $\begingroup$ First off, change the color space of all your image textures (except for basecolor) from sRGB to Non-Color $\endgroup$
    – Christopher Bennett
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 18:44
  • $\begingroup$ Done... Looks "different" but still very flat. $\endgroup$
    – NickG
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 18:56
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    $\begingroup$ If you want true displacement, you'll have to (heavily) subdivide your mesh. I tried on your file by using a Subdivision surface modifier, but the results were "uneven". I think you need to UV unwrap again. $\endgroup$
    – Christopher Bennett
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 19:02
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    $\begingroup$ It's a large file, difficult for me to be very helpful.. but 1 thing.. you need at least a Subdivision Surface modifier set to 'Simple' and 'Adaptive' to have displacement work at all.. at the moment, it has no geometry to displace. I'm not sure the bump is mapped correctly. $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts ♦
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 19:03

1 Answer 1

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There are 2 different things:

  • For your normal setup, you need to switch the Image Texture to Non-Color as Christopher says, and the Normal Map to the default Tangent Space (I don't know what's Object Space though):

enter image description here

  • For your Displacement node. Again switch to Non-Color. Also, you've plugged this node into the Displacement socket of the Output, and you've chosen Surface > Displacement > Displacement & Bump in the material Settings, which means that you want the bump effect but you also want a real displacement effect. The displacement itself acts on real geometry, it can only affect an object that is subidivided enough, otherwise nothing happens. Your roof is just made of one face, so it can't be displaced for real. Therefore for the moment only the bump effect happens (which cumulates with the normal effect, which is ok if this is what you want but it may be redundant. And it will also be redundant with the real displacement):

enter image description here

As you can see here is what it gives if I subdivise enough a plane and give it your setup (I had to decrease the Displacement strength though), not sure the height map is good though, giving the result:

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ non-color doesn't mean black and white, it means that the data will not go through any kind of color transforms (or color management). $\endgroup$
    – susu
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 19:39
  • $\begingroup$ sure, thanks for the edit ;) $\endgroup$
    – moonboots
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 19:40
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks! I have switched to a commercial texture and made the changes above but it's still not working for me. However currently I have other issues with rendering: blender.stackexchange.com/questions/206702/… $\endgroup$
    – NickG
    Commented Dec 31, 2020 at 12:09
  • $\begingroup$ what do you mean when you say that it doesn't work? It seems to work fine. Of course this won't be real displacement as this is not the option you've chosen in the material settings, plus each side of your roof is only made of one face so you can't get any real displacement with only one face. Also, are you sure you need both the normals and the height? It's not a problem but as they seem to do both the same thing I guess only one is necessary $\endgroup$
    – moonboots
    Commented Dec 31, 2020 at 12:37

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