Normal Map settings

[Mord]

I started messin' with the normal maps...broke down and DLed Gimp 'cause my Adobe Elments 2 is just so out of date. Anyway, what settings were used for CMFI? I couldn't get any of them to look like the stock stuff.

Mord.

[Mord]

Anybody?

Mord.

[Mord]

Here's a stock original...

Here's the exact same face done by me...

Mine looks a lot different. What do I need to do to get it like the original? You can't even see the fingers. What am I not doing?

Mord.

[EZ]

I don’t have gimp, posting a picture of the dialog box showing the options you are using may help, but it should have a scale value option somewhere. Increase that value (default is probably 1 so use maybe a 6 see how that works. Also if there is a filter selection option, try changing that value. Default is probably a 4, with 3x3, 5x5, 7x7, and 9x9 as other selections. These effects how sharp it appears, 3x3 will make it crisp, 9x9 smooth or blurry.

Good Luck

ez

[MikeyD]

Here's an example of a hand-painted greyscale template before it got converted to the game bump map. The dark areas are meant to be indents, the light areas are meant to protrude. Cheekbones, brow ridges, ear holes, pads on the palms of the hands. The bump map was made using the Nvidia photoshop filter. I forget the settings, like height generation 5x5, scale 5(?) perhaps?

[Offshoot]

Were all the stock normal maps hand painted and/or derived from existing textures?

Also, I'm curious about what normal maps are applied to. I saw elsewhere that they aren't applied to terrain, but what about terrain objects like houses, trees, etc?

Once I get the game (can't until Wednesday because I'm already way over my data cap), I'll be keen to fire up ZBrush and see how far the normal mapping can be pushed.

[MikeyD]

Normal maps are 'mostly' hand painted with a couple exceptions. They cover uniforms, faces, weapons, vehicles, bridges, foritifications, and modular buildings. Flavor objects could accept them too, though I can't recall if any got any - Yes, a couple did. Things like signs and plackards needed special normal maps because strong darks-and-lights tend to 'self-bump' in unpleasant ways. Building facades were usually half based on the original (stucco or brick) art and half painted over to highlight trim. Indi building could've accepted bump maps too but we simply ran up against a deadline on getting the art finished.

[Offshoot]

Thanks for the answer - sounds like there's plenty of scope to play. Did the artists ever consider using sculpting to generate the normal maps, especially for more organic models?

[MikeyD]

Normal map art was being worked on while coding was still being done on the shaders, so for much of the time there was a question what the final shaders would be able to handle. So there was little attempt to get 'fancy'. Frankly the shaders turned out better than we could have hoped! Face normal maps were among the last bits done after we realized they could be done successfully. 80% of the bump maps are vehicles. Not much 'sculpting' to be done on metal plate and six-sided bolts.

[Earl Grey]

It entirely depends on what you're trying to do - vehicle maps can mostly be done with the stock textures if one keeps a few things in mind. I did mine that way, but had to redo a couple details afterwards so they'd show with the correct 'intensity' ingame.

All in all I generated three different normal maps for each vehicle and put them together into one single map for best effect.