Bitmap2Material now on Steam
interpolator
Hi all,
Just a quick word to give you some updates on Allegorithmic's world domination plans.
Bitmap2Material, our seamless normal/ao/spec/whatever generator is now available on Steam and for the occasion, we introduced a non-commercial license priced at $50, with 20% discount for the coming week.
That's less than 40 bucks for the best image-to-normal algorithm out there.
Just thought some of you guys might be interested to take advantage of the offer
Just a quick word to give you some updates on Allegorithmic's world domination plans.
Bitmap2Material, our seamless normal/ao/spec/whatever generator is now available on Steam and for the occasion, we introduced a non-commercial license priced at $50, with 20% discount for the coming week.
That's less than 40 bucks for the best image-to-normal algorithm out there.
Just thought some of you guys might be interested to take advantage of the offer
Replies
Why is it better than Crazybump and/or Knald?
The commercial version allows you to generate and tweak your normal maps in real time in UDK or Unity viewports.
There is a trial version over here if you want to check the quality by yourself.
about CB - I doesn't seem to get developed anymore. B2M also integrates nicely with Designer and together with the batch tools it's quite powerful. We got full licenses here, so I didn't have the time to check - but it would be cool if the batch tools would be included in the Stream version
what if i get B2M and need batch export but dont want to buy SD, what then ?
*Edit
in the trial, when i put output size to 4k the curvature map shows flat grey but if i go down to 2k it shows the curvature properly.
also the curvature calculation by default seems really off compared to what Knald is doing right now.
I just checked using high resolutions maps and indeed the curvature fades out above 1k. I just updated it with a higher quality version and fixed the fading out, I'll keep you updated as soon as the new build is up. Thanks for reporting the issue.
*edit*
Nevermind, I read about it on your site. Haven't even used Substance after initial purchase. Maybe I'll get around to it.
I'm just always disappointed to see that I've got to purchase yet another tool that doesn't come with my initial high price purchase.
MM, would you have a texture example on which the curvature looks bad to you ? It will in any ways look different than knald as the algorithms are obviously different, but it shouldn't look worse.
Keep in mind that our method tends to produce sharper normal maps, and the default settings can be too sharp with high resolution textures, setting the Fine Details slider to a very small value like 0.01 will change a lot the look of the curvature.
Difference between the default value and 0.01 value on a high-rez noisy input:
they height map produced by Knald is really nice and uniform without any lighting direction and works really well as a curvature map.
B2M on the other hand creates map with very visible light directions similar to the normal map. you can see left to right, top to bottom shading in both the curvature map and the height map. this is not ideal for a good curvature or even height map.
I tried changing several setting but wasnt successful in getting a uniform height map without any directionality. am i missing something ?
The trick is that if you use a normal map as input, you need to plug it to the "Bitmap Relief" input instead of the Bitmap Diffuse. If you don't, it actually interpret that normal as a height and produces the mess you got.
Here are the parameters you have to use to get a clean curvature from a normal map:
Also to get a clean AO, you might want to set the AO Light Strenght to 0 too.
Most of our default settings work really well for generating those maps from photographs, using a normal map as input was kind of an afterthought so you need to change a few settings, but once you got them right you can save them as a preset (button on the top right of the parameters).
the results seem to be a bit noisy even after denoise but i was able to get a cleaner result after switching to Direct3D 10 engine from options menu.
how would i go about batch converting/exporting multiple normal maps at once ?
There is currently no batch tool included with B2M, we are discussing including some though.
i honestly do not think that's the case, at all. it's nice that you can get a "similar" result (look how noisy yours is). but i'm certain the processes are not the same.
Wassup with that?
We probably don't use the exact same method, but the result is extremely similar. Most of the noise came from the fact that I'm was using a poorly resampled version of the image MM posted. I redid it properly here, and you can see it's almost pixel perfect although a bit sharper:
Same thing for the heightmap, it's very very similar
My point is, both are great
Alberto Rdrgz > Yes, that's what we didi with MM in the previous posts. Feeding it a heightmap will give you a lot of controls, feeding directly a normal map will give you less parameters to tweak but you can clicky get cavity, AO maps and such from it.
The update for the Curvature is done and should be up on Steam in a few days at most btw.
Also, it seems like a pretty cool program...but my problem is...how do I explain all this to another person. I dove into "Substance" yesterday night for the first time (I'm currently trying to watch tutorials on everything to get a better idea), but currently I've come up with this solution to everything.
Substance Player -
A free tool.
Used to adjust any "substances" that are already packaged within Autodesk's 3DS Max Map folders.
Pretty cool and I'm able to save out Diffuse, Normal, Specular, Bump, Height, and Displacement. (can't seem to get Displacement to work, not sure why yet)
You cannot pull up .jpg, .png, .targa, etc files.
Substance Designer -
Not a free tool.
You can use this tool to create "Substances" (I'm going to stop with the " ") and you can throw in .jpg, .png, .targa, etc files to have interesting new Substances.
I'm guessing you can export different texture maps with this tool? If not you'd have to pull up the Substance Player just to do that.
Substance Bitmap2Material -
Not a free tool.
Can take any image you have created, in my case a Diffuse texture map, and generate your other Texture Maps from it?
Afterwards, throwing them into Substance Designer...but not Substance Player?
It's rather confusing, I tried explaining all this to co-workers as it seems like it would save a lot of time, but I'm such a noob at it I don't know the proper way of explaining the workflow of this.
If you could break it down a bit, would be helpful. I'll keep listening to this tutorial and reading up on everything. You've probably got another Thread regarding this...I probably should have looked first.
Oh well, SEND!!!
Pretty much, yes. The displacement in most substances is by default a plain grey image and the "Relief Balance" parameter allows you to put details in it, from low frequencies only, to higher frequencies, to keep a smooth displacement.
You can export textures at any time. The 2D preview has a "Save as bitmap" option as well as a simple "copy to clipboard" button on any node you are visualizing.
By default, B2M will open within the Substance Player, and it works like any other substance.
The main difference being that you can use bitmaps(jpeg, tga, whatever) as inputs in the Player by drag and dropping them. You can also use the B2M file directly in Substance Designer as part of a larger substance.
However B2M will not work unless you've got it installed?
So until you install B2M you won't be able to open up any files within the Substance Player?
You can only open any Substance, not images in the Player.
You have to get Designer for this option.
Relief -> Output Normal Format: DirectX / OpenGL
If by Substance plugin you mean Bitmap2Material for Unity, the Steam Commercial version includes the B2M files that will work with Unity.