nDo - Normal creation toolkit
To all you CG fanatics out there!
I’m releasing nDo, my normal map creation toolkit for Photoshop. Thanks to my colleague Philip Klevestav (http://www.philipk.net/) who took the time to write an extensive tutorial for it, it will (after having collected dust for a year) finally be released to the public. For free!
What is this nDo thing?
Introducing a toolset for quickly designing normal maps without ever leaving Photoshop, nDo is a melting pot of normal creation techniques. Sculpt using your custom brushes, create volumes from selections, paths or layers, apply filters, generate complexly multifaceted normal maps from height or photographs, rotate and transform without biasing normal – nDo is designed to cover many of your normal mapping needs in a to-the-point format.
More info
To learn more about the tool, go to http://cgted.com/ for installation instructions, tutorials and downloads. For feedback, questions or feature requests, feel free to drop me a mail or two @ teddy.bergsman[at]gmail.com.
Teddy
Replies
I demand a frontpage showing of this within the next two days. I am blown away. Now all somebody needs is to make a gimp version...
edit:
had a play around with nDo and some of it's settings with a few random images, there is really great control over the resulting normal map. I can definitely see myself using this a lot in the future, incredibly worth the 11kb download! :thumbup: XD
great stuff
You're the man Teddie :thumbup:
and welcome to Polycount
However, I can't get it running on one my computers using CS2.
I get the following error:
Error 24: activeDocument.suspendHistory is not a function.
Line: 639
-> activeDocument.suspendHistory(
Anyone else getting this error?
I have sent an email to the author and will respond with a fix for those who may be running to a similar problem.
Cheers!
P.S. I've got it working in CS3, however CS2 is a no go.
I especially like how it looks like you have so much more control than other tools. Definitely gonna try this on my next project (gonna start texturing tomorrow, so the timing is perfect). Looks like it will be fun!
I haven't tried this yet, but it looks great
thanks for the release!
I got this error at first because I didn't have anything open. (a little excited for it) You must have a document open before running the script.
Only problem is:
I'm running: Photoshop CS4 32-bit; Windows 7 x64.
I'm also planning on testing this thing out as soon as I get it working to get some texturing done.
I ran into this same problem at first. You need to have a document open before running the script. Which makes sense since it is an action script.
oh...and holy fuck this plugin is amazing
I'm sure Teddy can tell you what's up with the errors some people are getting.
I'm personally using CS3 tho.
But yeah I've been using this tool almost daily for the quite some months and it would be very hard to be without it now so I'm so glad it's available public. Big thanks to Teddy!
PS. I hope you find the tutorial somewhat useful too :P
But I'm using CS4 and apparently someone was able to use it in CS4. Hope we get clear description of why some people get a CS4 error and some don't, so that the error will never happen again with another user!
PS: I guess you should post it in "Technical Talk" instead of "Pimping and Previews" section!
_Revel
/downloading/
That you kind sir, I shall use this knowledge for good, and never for evil.
and its pretty fast, even with 4096^2 maps
Thanks Teddy,
This. Is. Awesome!!
Thank you for doing and sharing this! And for documenting your workflow!
There is now hopefully a fix for the issues that have been mentioned. Just go to Philip's site and download the updated ZIP and you should be good to go!
The problem most of you are having...
Error 24: activeDocument.suspendHistory is not a function.
Line: 639
-> activeDocument.suspendHistory(
...is because an empty document must be created before you run the tool. HOWEVER, the updated nDo now creates a new document automatically if one can't be found.
Download the new ZIP (here) and see if it works for you now -- if not, I'm on it.
Thanks again for all your feedback!
Teddy
Trying it on an actual image even though the error still pops up I am able to adjust (almost?) everything that is in the GUI in the tutorial via the layer settings though... PS: W7 64 bit CS5
I added another example .PSD to the tutorial btw. Just a photo based one this time where I used hand masking a bit together with my nDo-generated normals (strangely the .PSD is ver large in filesize. I had originally planned to release it in it's full res (1024x1024) but then it'd be around 200MB...)
PSD: http://philipk.net/tutorials/ndo/Example_03.psd
Tutorial: http://philipk.net/tutorials/ndo/ndo.html
After some research, I think I may have nailed the source of your problem. It seems as it may be because of a corrupt Photoshop preference file, which needs to be trashed. This issue has been reported by several Windows 7 + PSCS5 users.
Solution (hopefully) link (how to trash your preferences without losing your workspace):
http://www.creativepro.com/article/photoshop-tips-trashing-the-preferences-file
Research links (threads that led to my conclusion):
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/682384?tstart=0
http://www.ps-scripts.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3492
Please let me know if this does or doesn't do the trick for you.
Good luck!
Teddy
Can't get past this error. Running CS2.
However it works great with cs3! Thanks!
I'm having problems getting the "transform" button in the UI to work though. When I click it, it gives me the transform box but I can't actually manipulate any of the points. I can use my regular transform hotkey though so I guess its fine... but I need to close the nDo UI first and then reopen it after transforming.
Still, thats a very minor thing and I can already see this tool playing a vital role in my normal mapping workflow, so thanks again!
edit: using PS CS5 64 bit