Hand paint normal maps?

alexk · May 2008

Sorry for the very noob question. In some threads lately there is mention of hand painting normal maps, what does that mean? Is that painting black and white and then converting it to a normal map? What type of details lend well to hand paining normal maps as opposed to a highpoly model bake?

bugo · May 2008

could you link us where you saw that? maybe the link can help us know what you are specifing saying handpaint normal map

AsylumSeaker · May 2008

They probably are talking about painting in greyscale like an old style bump map and converting to normal map using a plugin.
I prefer hand painting for fine details on flat surfaces. For example the scrollwork in this lovely submachinegun -

Mark Dygert · May 2008

CrazyBump is great for converting hand painted and even photos to normal maps. Really amazing tool. Otherwise you're stuck using things like the Nvidia PhotoShop plug-in, which isn't nearly as flexible or user friendly.

alexk · May 2008

Asylum: that's a fantastic example.... I kinda get it now

also..found the thread http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=53581

bah, u don't need a high poly for this. since this thing doesn't have many extreme shapes or angles, hand painting the normals is fine.

hmm the more I read and think about it, I think I'm starting to understand. so if you paint a diffuse, and then turn it into grayscale, you can then adjust the details.. well basically like a bump map where the white is highest and black is lowest, and then run it through crazybump or similar...

Joao Sapiro · May 2008

dont mind that comment on that thread, it was made from someone that probably doesnt have the patiente to make a high rez wich is 1000 times better than make a shitty handpainted normal and crazybumped. hand painted normals imo are only good for small details like pattern overlays, filigrees , etc things that if you do highpoly would take too much time

Eric Chadwick · May 2008

Painting also helps correct baking artifacts. A couple tuts.
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow_3.htm
http://www.paultosca.com/varga_hair.html#nmap

stimpack · May 2008

i only paint on normal maps when its time to clean them up or tweak stuff. After a while you kinda memorize what colors do what and you can better judge what to paint where. also 128,128,255 is the generic normal map color. Use it to paint out seams, errors ect.

Japhir · May 2008

you can bake a sphere to a plane and use that as colorpalette. I tried it once because i didn't feel like modeling a high poly object

.

alexk · May 2008

good advice from all, thank you!

rooster · May 2008

pior once did a skin where he completely hand painted the normals no? and I mean hand painted not converted..

Tumerboy · May 2008

You can also just paint black and white in the R and G channels. Paint it so that on the Red Channel, light is coming from the left side, and in the Green, light is coming from above.

pior · May 2008

Sure did :P Used colors picked from a ball and a prism and also copy-pasted stuff from old maps floating around. It's a bit unpredictable tho, not something one would want to rely on heavily in production...
http://pioroberson.com/images/3d_pior_bobodemon.jpg

I also had some greyscale bump on top since doom3 allows these maps to be separated. But I could have had that detail bump layer converted as normals, fo'sho.

Hand paint normal maps?

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