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Re: Normal maps, Engines and dull colour palettes!
I think a lot of the people who figure that pure diffuse is a thing of the past, and therefore don't ever bother learning it, fall flat on their faces. It's pretty hard to make good next-gen (for whatever that word is worth) models and textures if you can't paint a decent diffuse map. So I wouldn't say any is easier to… -
Re: Normal maps, Engines and dull colour palettes!
seems a bit of a nostalgia case to me. I think the skillset you need to make games these days is incredibly more complex than what artists were expected of back in the day, Thats not to say that hand painted artwork is crap, I love it too but give it a normal map and a good artist and they are going to make that model kick… -
Re: Normal maps, Engines and dull colour palettes!
Did you only get into game dev recently? I'm 25 now and I was into texturing around the Quake 2 era. My first industry gigs (freelance and in-house) were 100% diffuse handpainted texture work. Looking back on my old stuff I think I could have made a much more awesome result if I'd been allowed to work with the tech… -
Re: Normal maps, Engines and dull colour palettes!
Diffuse-only textures are great, but I think the sweet spot is a combination. I find it difficult to believe there are game artists who "cannot paint." For some reason I cannot understand why someone who creates two-dimensional textures would only possess mad photo editing skills. Everyone should study painting, all the… -
Re: Normal maps, Engines and dull colour palettes!
So we have the art direction argument and one of the first negative points mentioned about current games was the "everything looks brown" look. I can only speak for myself here, but how I see this is that those "oldschool" guys do the same they did for their diffuse textures back in the old days, minus the painted in… -
Re: Normal maps, Engines and dull colour palettes!
I think everyone was just already of the opinion that the only thing that really matters to the look of any game is the art direction and the quality of artists working on it... if both of those are good then the game will look great regardless of the platform or technology it's based on. Nobody needs to "defend" any side… -
Re: Normal maps, Engines and dull colour palettes!
Without reading the replies I'll reply to the OP. I think you can apply the same stylistic choices artists used to make to the new shaders/maps and come up with some amazing art that isn't realistic but upholds the old style guides. You might not paint the spec highlight into the diffuse but you'll make sure that it gets… -
Re: Normal maps, Engines and dull colour palettes!
I think you also have to consider the engine that games use today. How many studios have UE3 as the engine for most current gen games (that's right, it's not next gen anymore damn it!) A ton. If it's not UE3, it's something that was made in house like Uncharted 2's game engine or Killzone. So you already have say 40-60% of… -
Re: Normal maps, Engines and dull colour palettes!
First, a mod needs to move this to general. So... I'm not sure if this about normal mapping vs hand painting, or sculpting vs painting, or about artistic skills and how normal mapping helps cover for people that don't understand drawing or painting. I kinda agree all you need to know for normal mapped work is the diffuse… -
Re: Normal maps, Engines and dull colour palettes!
Sorry but that' just not true whatsoever. Yes normal mapping will give the impression of extra geometry, and light will catch edges, shadows will indeed be cast on nooks/crannies, but to make it look any good, you've still gotta add some value in the diffuse, and more often than not, that is more than just slapping an AO…
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