lets you apply a normal map to your lowpoly then lets you edit the normal map by "sculpting" it? Something like zbrush but your only affecting the normal map not the 3d mesh?? If there isn't someone needs to make it lol
Something like zbrush but your only affecting the normal map not the 3d mesh??
This is essentially what you're doing in a program like Zbrush anyway. What would the advantage be of painting on a 2D canvas as opposed to a 3D canvas and then exporting it?
Stradigos - Well then wouldn't you have to rebake the the mesh? Or are you saying that there's a way to edit the just the normal map in zbrush with the it on the LP?? Sry I don't really understand i'm pretty new to zbrush :P
3dCoat would be the best for this, NDO2 was/is very slow (on a Quad Core Xeon 3.6).
Sculptris has this ability, but so unstable...haven't used it for some time so maybe it is fixed?.
I guess I should mention I only tried the first Beta of NDO2 so maybe the performance issues have been dealt with.
Would re-baking be such a terrible issue? I mean, if your already basing your normal map from a high poly mesh, then why not correct or edit the things on the highpoly you want to fix on the highpoly and re-bake? If you did make these changes only on the normal map, and then later decide to re-visit the highpoly to make changes, how would you incorporate the changes you made earlier only in your normal map? There might be some modifiers/features that lets you update highpoly based on the normal map, but it sounds like hassle to me.
I can see this being useful if your just talking about fixing smaller nitpicks as a way to save time by not having to bake.
The only reason I can think of is because you have a hard surface low-poly mesh and no time for a high-poly, you want to create some quick normal map details and you only have 13 minutes until prom.
That's not the only reason.
Here we're working heavily with outsourcing assets ( characters for me ) and in the most cases, the low poly has been so much reworked that it doesn't match anymore with the high poly Zbrush sculpt; and since I have to work on it to refine many things again, I can't rely on the Zbrush sculpt, the only thing I can do is painting normal directly
From my own experience, and from using 3Dcoat and photoshop, I can say that there is no perfect solution to do that
3Dcoat doesn't really permit you to "modify" the normal map, you can only add informations and sort of smooth some seams ( badly ).
In photoshop, I tend to use the neutral color to correct extreme things here and there and in some cases, I try to paint missing parts...
Not to mention, some asset pieces require nice rounded corners (without any support edges) and somewhat complex indentation inside, which would take too much time and sacrifice to make it look good.
Hey, if MW2 used direct, non edited images from CGTextures, I don't see why cheating in Normal's isn't perfectly fine by any standard.
I think its high time we had a normal map painting app.I remember studying Paul Tosca's normal map painting tutorial,how u paint yellow,green,magneta,cyan,blue colours and how they make detail apear from left to right and up to down.Its kinda complex but its a quick way to create details for things like guns,walls,mansonary designs,clothes details and so on but won't be good for painting organic normal map details.
I think there should be a way we can model our low poly characters,import them into this app and directly paint normal maps kinda in a way you can see the details as u paint rather than the technical colours involved.If this happens,this may mean trouble for sculpting apps cause we all know painting is far easier than sculpting, making apps like ZBrush,Mudbox quite useless.I remember trying to paint bump maps directly in Mudbox so I could later convert the bump to a normal somehow but the bump map looked really bad in Mudbox.
I feel there should be such an app.Would be really cool!!
Melviso, please complete this sentence: "Painting" a normal map onto a lowpoly model is better than sculppting and doing a retopo because_________. Like i understand why you might want to edit your normal map to fix small baking errors or add details like with ndo or crazybump or whatever, but doing away with high poly modeling seems silly.
Okay...for me I kind prefer modeling in Maya to sculpting cause I have more control over vertices,edge loop,where I put edges e.t.c.So if I finished modeling a low poly model with the right topology and low poly accesories,then uvmapped.All I need to do is just import it into the app and paint my normal maps.This is way faster than making high poly model,retopology,unmapping.export and bake normal maps and then start painting diffuse and other maps.
To understand more about what I am saying,check out the paul tosca tutorial: http://paultosca.com/makingofvarga.html (scroll down to the normal map painting part)
See how he is able to create very complex normal map details by just painting it.If you were to sculpt all that detail,would it be faster?
It took some time for me to grasp what he was trying to explain.If there was an app that enables painting normals in a better way.Hell yeah!!
Okay..maybe I shouldn't have said "we all know".Everyone has their own workflow.
sculpting is far more accurate then painting normal maps and once you know what everything does its as easy as painting! one thing you can do with sculpting is bake it down to a 256x256, 512x512, 2048x2048 normal map with only one sculpted base. If you wanted to uprez with the tool you are suggesting, then you get the same issues that you would get when you uprez an image.
Melviso you seem to be missing the point of sculpting.
In Paul Tosca's tutorial even though he suggests you can do plenty of normal map work with painting (which is true of course, especially for hard surface stuff) he goes on to do it all with sculpting (and pointing out that that's the fun part, again very true ).
3D-Coat (and nDo2) pretty much does what you seem to want to do, but they will never be viable to create a full complex character (but can be used to come in afterwards to add some low level detail for example).
Replies
This is essentially what you're doing in a program like Zbrush anyway. What would the advantage be of painting on a 2D canvas as opposed to a 3D canvas and then exporting it?
NDO get's pretty close. Love that program.
Stradigos - Well then wouldn't you have to rebake the the mesh? Or are you saying that there's a way to edit the just the normal map in zbrush with the it on the LP?? Sry I don't really understand i'm pretty new to zbrush :P
Thanks Guys!
Sculptris has this ability, but so unstable...haven't used it for some time so maybe it is fixed?.
I guess I should mention I only tried the first Beta of NDO2 so maybe the performance issues have been dealt with.
I can see this being useful if your just talking about fixing smaller nitpicks as a way to save time by not having to bake.
Here we're working heavily with outsourcing assets ( characters for me ) and in the most cases, the low poly has been so much reworked that it doesn't match anymore with the high poly Zbrush sculpt; and since I have to work on it to refine many things again, I can't rely on the Zbrush sculpt, the only thing I can do is painting normal directly
From my own experience, and from using 3Dcoat and photoshop, I can say that there is no perfect solution to do that
3Dcoat doesn't really permit you to "modify" the normal map, you can only add informations and sort of smooth some seams ( badly ).
In photoshop, I tend to use the neutral color to correct extreme things here and there and in some cases, I try to paint missing parts...
Conclusion : I'm also after this possibility
Hey, if MW2 used direct, non edited images from CGTextures, I don't see why cheating in Normal's isn't perfectly fine by any standard.
I think there should be a way we can model our low poly characters,import them into this app and directly paint normal maps kinda in a way you can see the details as u paint rather than the technical colours involved.If this happens,this may mean trouble for sculpting apps cause we all know painting is far easier than sculpting, making apps like ZBrush,Mudbox quite useless.I remember trying to paint bump maps directly in Mudbox so I could later convert the bump to a normal somehow but the bump map looked really bad in Mudbox.
I feel there should be such an app.Would be really cool!!
How so, and how is what you described any different than sculpting currently?
To understand more about what I am saying,check out the paul tosca tutorial:
http://paultosca.com/makingofvarga.html (scroll down to the normal map painting part)
See how he is able to create very complex normal map details by just painting it.If you were to sculpt all that detail,would it be faster?
It took some time for me to grasp what he was trying to explain.If there was an app that enables painting normals in a better way.Hell yeah!!
Okay..maybe I shouldn't have said "we all know".Everyone has their own workflow.
I'm pretty sure using geometry is also going to be faster and far more accurate for anything that isn't a plane with perfectly aligned UVs.
In Paul Tosca's tutorial even though he suggests you can do plenty of normal map work with painting (which is true of course, especially for hard surface stuff) he goes on to do it all with sculpting (and pointing out that that's the fun part, again very true
3D-Coat (and nDo2) pretty much does what you seem to want to do, but they will never be viable to create a full complex character (but can be used to come in afterwards to add some low level detail for example).