Hello polycounters!
I’m making normal maps for my tugboat model. And I just found super-quick-easy way to make small welding seams on normal map in Photoshop. May be everyone know this method, maybe it too simple, but i think it can be usefull for beginners.
Pros:
- Very fast
- You can erase or paint new welding seams anytime.
- No need to bake.
Cons:
- … May be there is a better way to do welding. In Substance Painter for example.
Result:
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You
need:
In
the end of this “lesson” you’ll get something like this:
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1.
First
step: New Brush. Open your normal map. Select Brush tool and select default “Soft
Brush”.
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2. Go to brush settings and change
settings like this:
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3. Now
test new brush. You’ll get something like this:
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4.
Create a new layer, name it “Welding
Brush”. Start painting welding seams right on your normal map.
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5. Now
create white layer under “Welding Brush”. Name it "Welding background". And
collapse this two layers.
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6. Go
to Filters menu. Go to "xNormal" and press "Height2Normal".
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7. Don’t change anything. It’s doing all
right by default.
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8. After that your black&white
layer turns into “normal” layer. Next step – blend welding layer with your normal map. Open “Layer Style” and change Blend Mode to Overlay. Disable the blue
channel.
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9. Last step: May be you need to invert
one or two channels (only R. Or R&G. Or only G). Depends on software you
use to bake normal map. I bake normals in 3Ds Max. So in my case I flipped Red
channel. Don’t touch Blue channel, it’s disabled anyway.
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10. Result:
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Thanks for watching!
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