Photoshop - Normal Map - Fillet the edges.

Ace-Angel

Hey to all,

I was wondering if anyone knew a good way to extract the hard information in Photoshop from a Normal map and process to create cheap and hacky ways a fillet an edge?

Cheers!

fatihG_

You could basically edit the Red and green channel manually and soften the hard edges with the blur tool or something

Ace-Angel

Ah yes, RG channels, that makes lots of sense, but I'm afraid I have no idea on how I would start tackling such an idea.

For example, would it be possible to edit the RG channels at the same time? I don't don the straightest of hands, so I might jitter the information on each channel too much.

Also, may I ask why no touchy the blue channel? I know the information located in there is bare since most software can 'rebuild' them within, but I'm still curious about said matter.

fatihG_

I never tried editing both at the same time tbh.

You can select 2 channels so I think it should be possible. About straight lines in photoshop. Shift+click drag will give you straight lines. On top of that if you got a prett new version of photoshop (I don't remember in what version they introduced this) you can hold R and rotate you canvas, so if you have straight lines at an angle you can rotate you canvas to match those angles and use shift+click drag.

Ontop of that.. you can use the pen tool in potoshop, straight lines and curved lines, to match the dges you need and do a simple "stroke path"

cptSwing

if the edges correspond to uv shells, you could select the whole shell, fill with white and blur / use crazybump i guess..

Ace-Angel

bb0x: Ah, I didn't know it could be that flexible, interesting. Thanks for the heads up, will check it out.

cptSwing: That's good info to have, but I'm a little confused as to about how I would go about this. From what I understood, I should do the entire B&W mapping technique and use that as my normal map approach, right? Essentially, like nDo, or did you mean something else?

PS: I just noticed Mudbox has a Paint Layer, and under it, has Bump Map and Normal Map painting options for textures. Anyone has any feedback in this area?

fatihG_

Your question about mudbox and the paint layers is a bit vague. What do you want to know?

Ace-Angel

Well, I was hoping to do the entire B&W paint in my Normal Map slot in Mudbox, and have it pop up as calculations for the normals (Crazybump and nDo style) but it doesn't seem to work, I'm getting no depth or detail what-so-ever, just recess and faded face normals.

On the other hand, I tried Bump, and it works perfectly, only issue, I can't find a decent solution to bringing it into a Normal map solution once I'm done creating it (EI: I don't get the correct details with Crazybump, Nvidia filters or any other method).

So I was wondering if any tips for this area is available, I also searched for tutorials beforehand on these two layer types, and no dice.