I wouldn't. Most game studios don't do that and would in fact prefer that you don't. Baked normals from high res geometry are always better!
If you're looking to develop skills that might get you a job, hand painting heightmaps isn't one of them.
I wouldnt say that is true all of the time.
Personally for the purpose of learning I would recommend making high polys.
In a real job situation you would probably have to identify things that will really benefit from a high poly and things that wont and then ndo/crazybump that stuff to the point that no one can tell it wasnt a highpoly.
It depends upon the type of project you are working on. I am currently working on a project in which i have to bake normals through height maps, not only grooves, but reliefs also. Its a good practice to have knowledge of height map baked normals.
Honestly if someone who has enough talent/skill and can hand paint a heightmap and it looks visually correct, what difference does it make if they use one or the other?
I'm simply coming at it from the angle of these challenges are to learn how to do environment art. Companies generally don't paint their normal maps by hand. Hence, if you want to learn the skills to get a job - bake your normals.
right learning the basics is always good, however, I disagree with the fact that "if you don't bake your normals, you wont get the job' that your post kinda conveys. Honestly this is all art, and whether you can automate everything or do everything by hand, it doesn't matter. What matters is the final product, which will make money. Logically companies who want to make money, don't care how you get to the final product, they just want it done and looks great. If i am wrong then companies are really looking at the wrong things to make them money lol
They DO care though. And they should. Consistency in the art pipeline is critical in many ways. If you're hand painting your normal maps, that means you don't have high poly meshes made which means that if someone else needs to work on, tweak or update your asset - guess what? They can't. They have to wait for you to do it and what if you're not with the company anymore or on vacation? Boned. And that's just a quick example.
Thing is though, for stuff like concrete slabs where the detail is mostly high frequency and pretty small, you can't really justify the time to sculpt this stuff, when you can get pretty close to whatever reference by generating normal from photos.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Naughty Dog sculpts their textures in ZBrush.
If you'd care to actually read the thread there's a mixture of both sculpting and painting to generate normals and heightmaps. To say that it's bad practice to paint heights and normals in photoshop is simply not true. "Most studios" aren't triple-A studios, and don't have the money to pay for high-end art, or keep a game in development long enough for every single tileable to be hand-crafted from scratch.
"...macro map was done in photoshop mostly I made a couple of random white strokes and black strokes than grabbed the smudge tool and bingo done in like 10 mins or so. Oh one piece of advice the longest route is not the best one. Some people would say sculpt that"
He hand painted a black and white macro texture with the smudge tool. If you think that's the same as hand painting normals then ... OK.
But hey, do what you want. What do I know...
Let's not be rude. I'm not suggesting you don't know what you're talking about, because you certainly do, I just think the point is debatable, and not simply method A is correct, method B is obsolete. Even in the great art dumps from people working on really big-budget titles that you find on this forum you'll frequently find artists drawing their heightmaps, using nDo2, crazybump, xnormal plugins etc to speed up the creation process. I just think you're writing off non-sculpting methods a bit prematurely.
With regards to this concept in particular, it's pretty much all clean concrete. I don't really see why something like this would be considered bad practice?
Using that stuff sparingly is fine. Look, I think what PhilipK is doing there is a far cry from CrazyBumping a diffuse texture or hand painting a normal map. It's all varying degrees, right?
I CrazyBump stuff sometimes to add accents or lettering to a normal map but I don't think it's a great thing to get beginners hooked on from the start. It's a tool that can be easily misused. So I was trying to emphasize learning the correct method first.
That's all. And I really think we should let this thread get back on track now. Fuck, I hate derailing threads.
New update.
Edit: yet another update. Replaced roof and added railroad lamp. Btw if you want your wire fence to drop smooth shadows, you can simply convert it to mover. This is the easiest way to make it.
I would have liked to have posted something sooner but I've done far too many iterations of this so it's taken me a little longer than I'd have liked... that and other commitments
anyway, any crits welcome
will check it in UDK soon, but want to have a couple pieces done before I hope back in
Okay, I finally put everything together in UDK, tweaked most of the meshes, because I wasn't satisfied with the proportions (the tunnel still seems to be way to small), and did a light blockout:
Do you mean shiny like "too bright" or "too much specular"? Cause there's only a grey diffuse on everything ^^ If you meant that it's too bright, I'll fix the lighting as soon as the materials are final
Lol, seems to be the mixture of some too bright lights and the rendered light rays... There's really nothing but the grey diffuse and the few alphas But I can totally see how the floor seems to be reflecting the whole scene... weird
Replies
I wouldnt say that is true all of the time.
Personally for the purpose of learning I would recommend making high polys.
In a real job situation you would probably have to identify things that will really benefit from a high poly and things that wont and then ndo/crazybump that stuff to the point that no one can tell it wasnt a highpoly.
That is such bad advice!
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=122359&page=2
This has nothing to do with this. Go post somewhere else.
A Wild project appears!
Awesome progress people.
If you'd care to actually read the thread there's a mixture of both sculpting and painting to generate normals and heightmaps. To say that it's bad practice to paint heights and normals in photoshop is simply not true. "Most studios" aren't triple-A studios, and don't have the money to pay for high-end art, or keep a game in development long enough for every single tileable to be hand-crafted from scratch.
"...macro map was done in photoshop mostly I made a couple of random white strokes and black strokes than grabbed the smudge tool and bingo done in like 10 mins or so. Oh one piece of advice the longest route is not the best one. Some people would say sculpt that"
But hey, do what you want. What do I know...
Let's not be rude. I'm not suggesting you don't know what you're talking about, because you certainly do, I just think the point is debatable, and not simply method A is correct, method B is obsolete. Even in the great art dumps from people working on really big-budget titles that you find on this forum you'll frequently find artists drawing their heightmaps, using nDo2, crazybump, xnormal plugins etc to speed up the creation process. I just think you're writing off non-sculpting methods a bit prematurely.
With regards to this concept in particular, it's pretty much all clean concrete. I don't really see why something like this would be considered bad practice?
I CrazyBump stuff sometimes to add accents or lettering to a normal map but I don't think it's a great thing to get beginners hooked on from the start. It's a tool that can be easily misused. So I was trying to emphasize learning the correct method first.
That's all. And I really think we should let this thread get back on track now. Fuck, I hate derailing threads.
Sorry!
just need to make the lights now
Should hopefully get my block-out finished and posted by tonight.
(:
Didn't have time recently ;/ Need to finish it fast!!!
btw awesome work everyone!
there are two sides to this station. another beyond those suppots with lights on them
Am aware. Don't know if I will add it though. It should be fairly easy. Change the wall into net and mirror rest of the scene... will see.
Edit: yet another update. Replaced roof and added railroad lamp. Btw if you want your wire fence to drop smooth shadows, you can simply convert it to mover. This is the easiest way to make it.
anyway, any crits welcome
will check it in UDK soon, but want to have a couple pieces done before I hope back in
block in done.
will begin work on individual parts tomorrow.
Unity 4
lol it's way tooo shiny for my liking at the moment.
Update. Random problems with lightmap uvs...
Do you mean shiny like "too bright" or "too much specular"? Cause there's only a grey diffuse on everything ^^ If you meant that it's too bright, I'll fix the lighting as soon as the materials are final
@ MrOneTwo:
Great progress! :thumbup:
Just some pipes.
anyway I think I have good solid foundations now
Lol, seems to be the mixture of some too bright lights and the rendered light rays... There's really nothing but the grey diffuse and the few alphas
Start of blockout. Kinda like the one tunnel you got going on MrOneTwo. May try that ;p
Boop.
lol i prefer this over that matalic looking one even if you only used cappy textures it still looks great.