World of Warcraft - normal maps?

Elod-H · Dec 2012

Hello everyone,

Was wondering about whether Blizzard uses normal maps in WoW. The textures and surface detail seem completely hand painted, but I can`t really be sure.

Thanks!

D4V1DC · Dec 2012

Yes.

No, normal maps.

Elod-H · Dec 2012

I see. Sometimes those textures look like as if they are snapshots of a high-poly version of the model. But I guess it's brilliant texture painting.

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Froyok · Dec 2012

Or they could have used normal maps during the creation process, then use some lights and baked the lighting inside the diffuse map.

Elod-H · Dec 2012

Hm, clever method you just pointed out there

. I am going to practice WoW in-game environmental work and at the moment I`m gathering as much info as possible to know what I would need to focus on.
It is clear that they do not use the very sofisticated technical stuff, rather they hand paint a whoole lot of things (which adds an amazing feeling to the game), but I`d like to know if I should focus on normal mapping if I plan to create WoW art, or not.

passerby · Dec 2012

what you got highlihghted there in the pictures just looks like they baked in AO, from a highpoly, the highlights still look painted in.

besides no normal maps dosnt mean there still not baking AO, cavity and curevature information from highpoly meshes

Ace-Angel · Dec 2012

It looks like they bake out AO and Cavity info, and use that for the top down effect.

Snader · Dec 2012

You shouldn't focus on normal mapping when you want to make WoW art. It won't hurt to know it, no, but for now it's probably best to focus on getting the basic diffuse mapping down reaaaal tight.

Offtopic: it really confuses the crap out of me why the two statues are so highpoly in comparison to... everything else.

Elod-H · Dec 2012

Hm, interesting stuff. When I was playing the game I often went really close up to check these textures out and surely they make a high poly version as well. So, they bake out AO, which makes a lot of sense.

Snader: yeah, I wanted to be sure about whether I should include normal mapping in my workflow when working on WoW stuff or not. It's an awesome chance to really practice and learn some new texture painting skills.
Do you guys know any good learning sources on texture painting btw? I have a decent amount, but would love to hear some advice.

Thank you

Lennyagony · Dec 2012

Ace-Angel wrote: »

It looks like they bake out AO and Cavity info, and use that for the top down effect.

Or they may just manually paint the textures? i wouldn't be surprised to see some of the baking techniques working their way into the current expansions, but with a bunch of the legacy artwork being 10 years old now? baking wasn't really apart of the process.

Bigjohn · Dec 2012

I'm 99% sure those textures are just straight-up painted with no baking at all.

I doubt they would even take the time to build geometry to bake off of anyway. The geo is most likely just a flat plane (or near flat), so there wouldn't be anything to bake from.

Neox · Dec 2012

not that i'm saying its not straight painted, but big john, that doesn' make any sense. What does the planar character of the lowpoly say about some highpoly beeing baked in?

Bigjohn · Dec 2012

It doesn't say anything necessarily. Just that I'm having a hard time imagining them building a highpoly just to bake an AO off of, and then toss it and map everything to a flat plane. You'd be better off just painting the whole thing. And I think that's what they did.

MainManiac · Dec 2012

even the AO looks hand painted in, not generated. They probably just paint it. It isn't crazy hard. Could it be done through baking? Sure, but personally I think it would look too artificial

Building a highpoly just to endup with a small lowpoly texture is almost a step backwards (for WoW, anyway) AO baking is just a plus, normal maps are the real motive behind baking. Its very easy to make shapes like that with the pen tool and just use a semi-soft brush to shade.

It would be wayyy faster to paint it than to bake it

Elod-H · Dec 2012

Makes sense. So, as a conclusion: for WoW art it's recommended to be really good at hand painting things instead of going with a lengthier baking process.

Ace-Angel · Dec 2012

The detail on the right very much looks baked, there is some arc overlapping but also slightly clipping one into another, those are usually signs of clipping from baking, especially on flat planes.

Question is, if they indeed do everything in hand, then why fake the clipping artifacts you get from baking too? Is there a point? Doesn't that take longer? Doesn't it kinda defeat the point of hand painting too, since you're still getting the same 'mistakes' from a bake?

And generally speaking, using something like XNormal to bake generic AO maps from a couple of splines>cubes is much quicker then trying to gauge what might be 'correct' for this kind of information, or at least use it as a base for length cast, especially if you're looking for a unified art style.

Lastly, someone mentioned why the sexy-elf statues are higher in count then the buildings; because those elf statues are static character models, and because having 'bulkier' and more square buildings is cheaper to make and more natural to look at, then something that happens to be the mushy middle (EI: not low poly enough to look bulky or makes sense, but not high enough to give it a feasible look like art-novena).

ivanzu · Dec 2012

We need Jessica to answer this.:)

World of Warcraft - normal maps?

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