Sculpting Normals or Photosource them ?

Ongaku

I'm planning my first UDK environment and I've been all over the place looking at pieces and different workflows. Right now I'm specially interested on modular modelling for buildings facades.

On the subject of workflows one thing that's not clear for me, about the more realistic type of objects (walls, windows, doors, bricks) what's the trade of of using just photos to get normals against sculpting them myself ?

I think sculpting in general takes more time, and I'm not very good at it either. But this can be an opportunity to get better, If there's a really significant reason to do it.

Butthair

This could depend on the type of surface, concrete doesn't have a lot of normal definition for example, so sculpting it might not be worth it.

In any case, if it's faster to get and use photo source normals then do it, sculpt your own if you have the time afterwards, it may turn out you only need so many normals than what is originally thought. So why do more assumed work when you won't use it all?

A lot of games use photo sourced images and use programs like crazy bump or xnormal in photoshop or substance to generate their normals, they may then go in and adjust them afterwars if needed, but you're not a production team, so just go with what keeps you moving to the end goal.

You can polish once you're near the end. You should.

Orb

I would say sculpt it, or rather try some kind of hybrid workflow, like ndo, or rough sculpt+photoshop editing etc but for me you said it all:

I think sculpting in general takes more time, and I'm not very good at it either. But this can be an opportunity to get better

if sculpting takes more times and you are not good a it, then definitely focus that, to get faster and get better at it .

Ongaku

This community is awesome, thanks a lot for the responses, I will be going with the hybrid solution. I can think of some places on my reference where sculpting can be worthwhile, maybe it can aid on making some things pop out more than others on the map. I'm sure it will help on the level design.

ExcessiveZero

you can always sculpt and overlay details from photo sourced normals, ben mathias (sp?) from poopinmymouth.com has a good tut on deepening normal maps, thats a good one to check out, theres so many options available today with stuff like NDO2, sculpting is not the only way to get Normal map detail but I think its for sure a pretty good one.

sprunghunt

As the move towards Physically Based Shading becomes widespread you'll want to sculpt, or model, most of your normal details. PBR shading is very dependent on having good quality normals. And in most cases this means getting them from a hipoly model.

Ongaku

Thanks for mentioning PBR, I've been reading about it, I'm really interested and I would like to take advantage of that on my scene. I saw this http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=124934 so maybe I will try it.

EarthQuake

sprunghunt wrote: »

As the move towards Physically Based Shading becomes widespread you'll want to sculpt, or model, most of your normal details. PBR shading is very dependent on having good quality normals. And in most cases this means getting them from a hipoly model.

I certainly would not say this. Physically accurate shading has little to nothing to do with how you create your normal map content. If the content is good content, its good content, if its poorly done, its poorly done.

I use a mix of modeled, sculpted, hand painted height, and photo-dirivied normals.

Everything has its place depending on the type of material you're creating. I wouldn't try to create normal maps for complex geometric/mechanical shapes from photos, and I also wouldn't waste my type painstakingly sculpting fine patterns for fabrics, concrete(aside from large/medium form shapes/wear) etc.

Your PBR shader has no idea where your normal map came from and will not scold you if you didn't create it in some specific manner.

Steppenwolf

Don't think PBR will make photo sourced textures/normals a thing of the past. From how i understand it the biggest difference is that we'll have to deal with albedo maps instead of just using the photo source or its derivate as is for a diffuse map. But i'm sure some proper tutorials will pop up for this once it becomes more widespread and updates for ndo etc.

Amsterdam Hilton Hotel

eh, i dunno. from the content creation perspective, working with a PBR shader isn't fundamentally different from working with a non PBR shader. if you're already used to thinking about materials in the structure of diffuse, spec, and gloss components - none of that has changed, although some of it has a newer fashionable name (diffuse becomes albedo, gloss becomes cosine... it's just a lexical choice). there's still plenty of room for the appropriate use of photosourcing and for heightmap-generated normals. neither of those methods is going anywhere.

marks

People need to stop thinking of PBR as some kind of magical unicorn bullshit. It's the same stuff as we did before, with some more shader math, and less ability to screw things up by not paying attention.

iniside

Steppenwolf wrote: »

Don't think PBR will make photo sourced textures/normals a thing of the past. From how i understand it the biggest difference is that we'll have to deal with albedo maps instead of just using the photo source or its derivate as is for a diffuse map. But i'm sure some proper tutorials will pop up for this once it becomes more widespread and updates for ndo etc.

It's only partially true. You will still want to use diffuse, with some faked lighting in it.
The sad truth is, that real-time rendering is nowhere near close to be able to pick all the small details.
You shouldn't use big fakes, but small ones are ok.

As for normal. It doesn't matter. As long as you get the result you want. I would still try to learn sculpting some things, as you will sooner than later meet situation where you can't just find right photo, for what you want. And only options left are painting heightmap in photoshop (have fun) or using zbrush.

Steppenwolf

iniside wrote: »

It's only partially true. You will still want to use diffuse, with some faked lighting in it.
The sad truth is, that real-time rendering is nowhere near close to be able to pick all the small details.
You shouldn't use big fakes, but small ones are ok.

Not disagreeing with you. From what i've seen how the albedo textures look it's probably just gonna be a case of running a couple more filters and adjustments to remove most of the lights and shadows.

And you are probably right that some of it will remain. When the last gen of materials came around people said the same, that diffuse maps only should contain color information yet ao maps and fake ao stuck because it simply looks better.