Normal Maps

demoncage

Hi,

My system is a little aged at this point, I plan to get a new one soon but for the time being I'm wondering if there's some good programs to view normal mapped models in using my current rig. I have a Pentium 3, 512 ram, Geforce 5200, and the real problem: Windows ME.

I'm looking for a normal map model viewer that allows normal, diffuse, and specular at the very least. Preferably it would allow for fairly decent results, at least doom 3 quality, but I'm open to any suggestions.

Thanks for any replies.

Eric Chadwick

How about Doom 3? Great previewer. Does it run on your system?

There's a thread around here where people talked about how to set it up for previewing and auto-updating their models as they worked.

demoncage

Hey, thanks for the reply Eric. Doom 3 would be great. In fact I used Doom 3 to normal map one of my models and I really got into it, but it was on a friend's computer and I doubt it would run on my machine. Guess its worth a shot though. I'll try and track down that thread you mentioned, or if anyone knows the thread title, feel free to post it.

Other suggestions would be cool too. I've tried using NVidia's cg plugin but couldn't install the cg compiler because you need Windows 2k are XP. Same OS barrier for Max versions later than 5.1. I have Melody and can generate normal maps with it but they just have that shit viewer at the top of the interface. Orb doesn't work on my machine. Anyone use ATI's normalmapper? thoughts?

palm

Have you tried this one?
http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1281

demoncage

Thanks palm, I'll give it a look see. Thanks alot for the link man.

demoncage

Hey palm, been messing around with der_ton's viewer, but not quite getting it yet. I've edited my .ase file to point to the normal map textures but they are not being mapped on correctly. also, how do you go about referencing multiple tex maps like normal, diffuse, specular? finally, my debug file shows a long ass list of identical verts for my model, is that unusual?

Anyone who has used der_ton's md5 viewer and has some feedback please feel free to educate my dumbass. I've checked google for tutorials on using it and read the original thread thoroughly with no luck. pior?

pior

[ QUOTE ]

A bit of setup is required. Create a new folder somewhere on you HD and put all your 3 TGAs in it. Rename the diffuse to 'whatever.tga', rename the normalmap to 'whatever_local.tga' and the spec to 'whatever_s.tga'. If you ever need an extra greyscale bump map for fine details you would need to call it 'whatever_h.tga'.

Export your lowpoly model as a ASE, put that in the folder you just created. Open the ASE in a textediting program and look for the line where the material path is indicated. Delete the absolute path that fetches the texture map from your disk and replace it by the name of the TGA only. In my case I had :

*BITMAP "D:\crea 3d\_tutoriels pior\tutoriel vieuxfou\doom3\tt.tga"

And I renamed that to :

*BITMAP "tt.tga"


[/ QUOTE ]

from

http://pioroberson.com/tuts/tut_texturing_tricks.htm

Hope that helps!

demoncage

Hey! I'm really glad you posted that quote actually because I was mulling over that exact segment of your tutorial earlier today. Awesome tutorial by the way.

So my question is: how do you set that up in max before exporting to .ase? do you just fill 3 material editor slots, one for normal, one for diffuse, one for specular, rename them in the .ase and the md5 viewer retrieves them automatically?

demoncage

Ok, as a test I generated a plane in max, exported to zbrush and made it all bumpy. Used the melody to create the normal map and renamed it to floor_local.tga. made a diffuse, floor_d.tga, and dumped both files into the directory that the md5 viewer accesses according to the scene.txt. went into max and exported the plane as an .ase and edited the bitmap lines accordingly after export. when I load the model into the viewer all I get is the plane with the flat rgb encoded normal map, no per pixel lighting and no sign of a diffuse map being loaded. did I miss something?

p.s. Do you have to make a material file? I seem to remember der_ton saying that the viewer does not recognize material files.

pior

Don't know... Maybe that's a vidcard issue? I remember some quote by Derton stating that you need some specific extensions on your card to run the thing.

But all in one, no material file needed, and only one material slot to be filled up in max. I usually run both 'cleanmedit' and 'killmaterial' blur scripts before applying a texture so that everything is clean and nicely setup for ase export.

Feel free to send me the files/zip if it still doesn't work! We'll see if it's a harware issue or not...

Yay!

demoncage

Cool, got my terrain to display with per pixel lighting and diffuse map using only one material editor slot. Thanks Pior! Interesting that the spec map does not need to be included in the .ase, only in the directory specified in scene.txt.

So I'm curious now. After having my way with this simple model, now I'm experimenting with a character mesh. It has two sets of uv's: one for the body, one for the head. I've tried using the first mat. editor slot to hold both _local.tga's but of course it will apply one or the other to both the head and body objects instead of keeping the appropriate texture for each. so how do you work around that? do you have to create a multi-sub object material?

Sorry for all the questions, I'll definately continue trying to hack it on my own but feel free to give any info if you have time or want to.

Thanks again.

Double Yay!

pior

Yeah I've been searching for that too... I tried many things to get two material displayed but had no time to look further into it.

Its possible tho since Derton made a screengrab of the doom male model perfectly displayed in his viewer, body and head. I think Vahl's spaceman also fully displayed too... That leads me to believe that actual md5s might be the best format to use in that case, which is a pain!

I wish DT included some manual material assign button...

Tintin

This is a problem with Ase. files, the only solution is to detach the head as seperate mesh and apply a another material slot for it, then group every thing, do not reattach it. You can't apply a multi-sub-obj material.

Quasar

Have you tried Crytek's Polybump Previewer? You can find it on their site.

PaK

Polybump will solcve your generation problems aswell as your viewing problems.

-R

vahl

I used to work with the ati normal mapper before switching to doom3, the render is very good, it renders occlusion term, the viewer is ok. but it's really really slow...maybe the slowest normal map renderer (depending of the rendering quality of course, but I'm talking about somehting the same quality as doom3's output).
From what I remember, the polybump viewer was pretty good, I don't remember if it supported mirrored uvs though...doom3 does, for sure.

for doom3, the best format is md5 indeed, and as it's a text file, you can tweak it directly with notepad (once generated by der ton's max2md5 plugin)it's pretty easy to use, as soon as you like long text files.