Wooooo cool! I'm going to write up a couple things for tips on texturing this chunky pillar.
Before the write up, ill suggest to you if you're texturing to not be afraid to manipulate the Normal Map beyond what was processed out of Max. The initial render is an excellent base to work with, but in the end you can take the texturing sooooo much further with additional love in the normal, and compliments the work in the Diffuse and Specular. This is true for all normal maps, regardless of engine or application.
Just as with "old tech's" fancy ways of skinning to work with the mesh; this is no different - except for the fact that you now have 3-4 textures to worry about I hate thinking about it as "old school" and "new tech," because in the end its the same exact goal: make it look freakin cool.
I worked on this image combo in about 5 minutes for the relief mapping thread, then somehow lost my post. So, I though I'd post it here. I'll try and put it on the model if I get some time this weekend, but It's most of the way to a finished diffuse and specular map, thanks to Ror's great source images.
It's basically a high pass filter applied to the heightmap and lightmap in varying degrees, then the two are combined. Extremely quick and very useful in getting close to final textures.
cool stuff guys! heh ill have my skin updated soon, got caught up with some things.
Zat: i will occasionally, if i need to go in to add some major damage / texture to the normal map that is not easilly done in phtoshop (subtle ripples, bubbles, etc). Most of the time though, its all ps.
One of the problems with the ps filter is that it has difficulty creating really deep looking things, but if you want to get around that, you can:
- duplicate your layer 3 times (grayscale layer to make into a normal map)
- create a layer filled with 127, 127, 255 (normal map blue) and put it at the bottom. this can be bypassed, not really needed.
- Gauss blur layer 1 at 15 or 20. the idea is to get a "major" impression of the dents.
- guass blur layer 2 at 5 or so, capturing minor stuff.
- leave layer 3 as is, or put a unsharp mask on it (unsharp is a decent idea) for the details
- apply normal map filter to each layer, with varrying depths. layer 1 (heavy blur) gets the deepest number, say 15 or 20. Layer 2= 9, layer 1= 5 (or whatever you need)
- put layer 3, 2, @ 0% opacity
- adjust layer 1, or put it at 100%
- tweak the other two layers, until you get a nice blend of detail, depth, and midground.
- Merge layers, go!
This technique is good for organics in ps, and will make most all organic textures look like the normal map was modeled.
Bryan: looks hot man, dig the orange. Try taking your orange paint layer, ctl clicking its opacity, filling with white, and making a normal map overlay for added height. it will add a lot. If you do overlay the layer (that you run the filter on), be sure to copy the "clean" normal map's blue channel, pasted it into a new layer, Overlay, merge, and put that blue chan back into the image. otherwise, the overlay blend mode will destroy the darks in the normal. after looking at the anim, you may have that in there already and my eyes just suck.
Doc: HOT! i think the dirt stuffs by the latches could be blacker in the specular, to really make a stark contrast between it, and the dirt / rust. Max is kinda funky about showing speculars though. sweet!
Just to confirm my suspicions; this render with the normal map is wrong. My hardware is too old to render normal maps am i right?
In the left image, there is an estranged highlight on the edge of this dint. What i think is happening here is that its being rendered as a bump map (like each RGB channel is displayed as the 3 gray scales that they are). Does this sound right to anyone? I'm using mental ray and the shader is set to use tangent space normals.
nah, looks like oyu just need to flip your green channel home slice. I dont think you would see bump at all if you had old hardware and tried to dispaly a normal map. Go into PS and flip ythe green channel on your normal map and then giveme a high five like you MEAN IT.
here's what i made for the beam textures. I dunno why but i love the yellow contrasting so much from the green swirly designs, the yellow being so bright and all. You can't really see the spec well from these max renders but there is/should be a lot of interesting color variation in the spec
"3/4 mapping" is a made-up term for something related to the process of mirroring the UV mapping coordinates. Except here you offset the seam from the middle of the model, so only part of the surface is mirrored. The middle area is not mirrored. The UV seam then occurs off the center line.
What is the point of object space normal mapping (apart from it merely existing as an alternative option to sampling tangents)?
Is there any reason one would ever use object space normal mapping? In what situation would you sample with an object space normal map rather than tangent space, and why?
tangent space:
works when animated,
can be handpainted (well converted from classic bump/height map),
less memory, can be reused on different surfaces (think map brushes)
object space:
faster, no problems with all the "what renderer uses what tangent creation method"
not flexible, not applicable to different object,
cant mirror uvs -> more memory, unique mapping needed
All the links are broken ?
My brain is also out. Too much information, that's a totally new world I'm trying to conquer, but that's awesome.
Thanx for sharing.
Links are broken because the thread is over a year old, welcome to the interweb-u-tron =P I think someone has it archived and saved in PDF format. I forget who tho =/
[ QUOTE ]
All the links are broken ?
My brain is also out. Too much information, that's a totally new world I'm trying to conquer, but that's awesome.
Thanx for sharing.
[/ QUOTE ]
Here is the valuble PDF which helped me imensly. Thanks again Rorshach!
Pleased for you you found this, and that someone (me) still has some files from it.
Sorry,
The thread is old but still valuable, thanks for the link.
I hope I will not boring you but I can't understand how do you make the 3/4 trix for the map.
How do you manage your uv to be able to do a things like that 3/4 trick
Replies
Before the write up, ill suggest to you if you're texturing to not be afraid to manipulate the Normal Map beyond what was processed out of Max. The initial render is an excellent base to work with, but in the end you can take the texturing sooooo much further with additional love in the normal, and compliments the work in the Diffuse and Specular. This is true for all normal maps, regardless of engine or application.
Just as with "old tech's" fancy ways of skinning to work with the mesh; this is no different - except for the fact that you now have 3-4 textures to worry about
Thanks, and many thanks for this thread!
It's basically a high pass filter applied to the heightmap and lightmap in varying degrees, then the two are combined. Extremely quick and very useful in getting close to final textures.
the metal definately needs love for this project. i totally want to try another round.
animated gif here to show speculars beam rotate
Nice work too, doc_rob... very interesting thread here.
Zat: i will occasionally, if i need to go in to add some major damage / texture to the normal map that is not easilly done in phtoshop (subtle ripples, bubbles, etc). Most of the time though, its all ps.
One of the problems with the ps filter is that it has difficulty creating really deep looking things, but if you want to get around that, you can:
- duplicate your layer 3 times (grayscale layer to make into a normal map)
- create a layer filled with 127, 127, 255 (normal map blue) and put it at the bottom. this can be bypassed, not really needed.
- Gauss blur layer 1 at 15 or 20. the idea is to get a "major" impression of the dents.
- guass blur layer 2 at 5 or so, capturing minor stuff.
- leave layer 3 as is, or put a unsharp mask on it (unsharp is a decent idea) for the details
- apply normal map filter to each layer, with varrying depths. layer 1 (heavy blur) gets the deepest number, say 15 or 20. Layer 2= 9, layer 1= 5 (or whatever you need)
- put layer 3, 2, @ 0% opacity
- adjust layer 1, or put it at 100%
- tweak the other two layers, until you get a nice blend of detail, depth, and midground.
- Merge layers, go!
This technique is good for organics in ps, and will make most all organic textures look like the normal map was modeled.
Bryan: looks hot man, dig the orange. Try taking your orange paint layer, ctl clicking its opacity, filling with white, and making a normal map overlay for added height. it will add a lot. If you do overlay the layer (that you run the filter on), be sure to copy the "clean" normal map's blue channel, pasted it into a new layer, Overlay, merge, and put that blue chan back into the image. otherwise, the overlay blend mode will destroy the darks in the normal. after looking at the anim, you may have that in there already and my eyes just suck.
Doc: HOT! i think the dirt stuffs by the latches could be blacker in the specular, to really make a stark contrast between it, and the dirt / rust. Max is kinda funky about showing speculars though. sweet!
In the left image, there is an estranged highlight on the edge of this dint. What i think is happening here is that its being rendered as a bump map (like each RGB channel is displayed as the 3 gray scales that they are). Does this sound right to anyone? I'm using mental ray and the shader is set to use tangent space normals.
We have a bonus bumpy lump bump lumpy bonus bump! Jackpot
I have a Radeon x850xt on its way that should take care of it.
Here's an example, courtesy b1ll...
http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/cottages/b1ll/leuge.jpg
The ear is mirrored, but the face is not.
There are more extreme examples of this, where the seam is closer to the midline, like only the eyes/cheeks but I just can't remember where.
Is there any reason one would ever use object space normal mapping? In what situation would you sample with an object space normal map rather than tangent space, and why?
works when animated,
can be handpainted (well converted from classic bump/height map),
less memory, can be reused on different surfaces (think map brushes)
object space:
faster, no problems with all the "what renderer uses what tangent creation method"
not flexible, not applicable to different object,
cant mirror uvs -> more memory, unique mapping needed
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=1276815&postcount=7
My brain is also out. Too much information, that's a totally new world I'm trying to conquer, but that's awesome.
Thanx for sharing.
All the links are broken ?
My brain is also out. Too much information, that's a totally new world I'm trying to conquer, but that's awesome.
Thanx for sharing.
[/ QUOTE ]
Here is the valuble PDF which helped me imensly. Thanks again Rorshach!
Pleased for you you found this, and that someone (me) still has some files from it.
GOLD
TRUE STORY
The thread is old but still valuable, thanks for the link.
I hope I will not boring you but I can't understand how do you make the 3/4 trix for the map.
How do you manage your uv to be able to do a things like that 3/4 trick
http://wiki.polycount.net/CategoryEnvironment