Crazybump vs nDo2 (for Photo/Texture conversion)

mister_s

I really like nDo2 for modifying existing normal maps from objects that have been previously baked, but I have a hard time getting a decent photo conversion from it.

Maybe I'm just used to the ease and quickness in Crazybump? Being able to keep such a quick real time preview of what the changes being made look like helps. The nDo2 previewer is slow even on a relatively quick machine like mine. I find the closest I can get is with the photo conversion option, but its always too blobby to use and it lacks the finesse that the total conversion options give. The total conversion options always seem way too harsh, though. It takes a lot longer to get something that I'm satisfied with.

I'm not creating the thread to knock nDo2, like I said, it is boss. I just can't find a good way to use it in these situations. Does anyone have any tips they use when they use nDo2 for conversion of images into normals?

aajohnny

I haven't had problems converting photos to normals. Have you tried the preset normal options in nDo2? also you can go to each group and tweak the result in there, it would be really hard to get some bad results with some tweaking.

mister_s

Yeah, the presets are what I use most of the time. It's not that I can't get something nice looking, but the time it takes is so much longer than it is with Crazybump. I haven't been able to justify all the tweaking for getting a good normal out of nDo2 from a texture. Now don't get me wrong, I can get great looking results but there are diminishing returns in terms of time/output when I spend so long getting a normal.

There are tons of crafty people here so I didn't know if maybe someone found a neat trick or better way of doing it within the software.

Thanks for the response, though, I appreciate it.

FlynT

I think the main intention of nDo2 was to create a proper way of building your own normal maps from scratch in photoshop rather than having yet another texture to normal converter.

For general texture to normal conversions i would use nvidia's normalmap plugin together with some blending/masking and layering. This doesn't take long and will give you most of the time better results than crazybump or nDo2.

Whenever you decide to use nDo2 for normalmap creation, don't limit yourself to use just the functions of nDo2. Use brushes, shapes, filters, adjustments and layer masking to define exactly what you want your normalmap to look like. The benefit of nDo2 is that you can use it with all the tools that photoshop has to offer. Sure it takes a bit more time but the results will overcome what crazybump can do.