3DS Max Quick Normal Map Tutorial

[PhilipK]

Thought it was time for me to contribute with something at least.

This tutorial is more for people who knows a little about modelling in 3DS Max, and focuses a bit more on what to think about while creating normal maps rather than exactly how I did this particular one step by step.

Anyway here goes:

1. Start your 3DS Max and get into the front view or whichever view you prefer, you will need to toggle between perspective a lot as well of course, but

the fixed view will show you how it will look when it's a generated normal map really.

I also prefer to work mostly in one view maximized (you can maximize your selected view by pressing the button in the far right bottom corner or alt+w)

Anyhow. Turn on your grid (s), right click the icon make sure it's set to snap to "Grid Points" right now.

It will be a lot easier for you to work with the grid snaps.

2. Drag out a plane that has the ratio of 1x1 or 1x2 or so, I went with 1x2.

Start segmenting it by connecting edges as you please and att trims to each side of it.

If you want it to be of better use ingame you should think about which positions you set the trims to

(i.e. have a trim 16 units wide ingame will make it easier for the leveldesigner to split than having one that is 7.83 or whatever).

After a while mine looks like this (I have no smoothing groups on it yet):

3. Continue with a new plane as detail stuff in the texture, chamfer edges.

Always try and have around 45 degrees at max angle on your chamfers or the normal map illusion might be ruined more than it would have to be.

This is my result after a few connections and chamfers, still no smoothing groups:

4. Notice my beveled detail at the left is "floating" in front of the rest.

This doesn't matter at all, since when you render the normal map it will ray it anyway.

Because of this type of simple normal maps you can "cheat" like this instead of splitting everything into your first plane which would take a lot more time.

I added some more details in form of bolts, notice they are also floating because of my lazyness.

I had them smoothed too from the start. Don't save polies on these, better too much than too little really. Don't want things to look when it's supposed to be round.

5. Now it's time to add some smoothing to the rest as well as mesh smooth some stuff.

So I'm starting to chamfer some hard edges.

Be careful with your smoothing groups, they will make a big difference.

For this one I chamfered most edges (some, very, very slightly) to get them not as sharp.

Some I chamfered a some more. I also gave large flat surfaces their own smoothing groups to break them out.

A few more details were added too. This is how it turned out:

6. Now over to the actual generation process. First of all, collapse all your objects so you end up with only one single object.

Now goto the front view (or whichever view you worked with). If you kept your outer edges to the grid this will be even easier.

We will call the object you now have the highpoly.

Create a simple plane that is the exact size of your highpoly outer limits. And place the whole plane a bit in front of the highpoly.

This plane is your lowpoly object. Do just like this:

7. You won't need to add a uvw map on the lowpoly plane as it's already mapped by default. But if you want to change it for some reason (perhaps rotate it or so) you are free to do that of course

Select your lowpoly only if it isn't already and goto the render to texture dialogue ("rendering > render to texture" or press "0").

Now in the dialogue enable "Projection Mapping" and press the "Pick" button.

A new window will open and in this you should only see one object really which is your highpoly model.

8. Now press the "Options" button right next to the button you just pressed.

If you were a fool when creating your highpoly and didn't manage to get it snapped to the grid everywhere (perhaps you got smoothed corners or something like that)

you can go ahead and change the "Ray miss check" colour in the new dialogue window that poped up. Change this color to 127, 127, 255 (RGB), which is flat normal.

9. Next press the "Setup" button for Global Supersampler.

Going with Adaptive Uniform should work fine, but it's your choice.

Why I use supersampling is to get a better quality output when renderin my normal map.

This is my settings anyway:

10. Next, you will need to acutally add the texture element that max is supposed to render for you.

Click "Add" and select "Normals Map".

11. Now where it says "File Name and Type" is where the normal map will be rendered to.

Choose where you want it to be saved and use 24bit .tga.

REMEMBER: This path is where your normal map will be saved to. The render output window that max will show you will NOT be the normal map.

You will get the correct normal map in the path you specify. It's very easy to miss this.

12. Select the size you want (I choose 512). Hit "Render":

If you didn't make your normal map square you will need to fix the size of it in photoshop or it will be stretched out.

Like mine which had a ratio of 1x2 I want it to be 256x512 rather than 512x512.

Depending on where you want to use your normal map you might need to invert the GREEN channel in it.

Max outputs it like this by default (and that works fine in HL2 etc:

That would be it. Hope it can help you somewhat.

Of course this is just ONE way of creating normal maps.

It's quick and you don't need to worry about stuff much, but it also has a lot of disadvantage that I won't go into right now.

[hessi]

nice. there are several normalmap tutorials around, but this one is really easy to read and understand.

how about a tutorial on basic texturing techniques? like: creating a wall texture using photo references.

[skdr]

Awesome tutorial. Thanks!

[cyberjunkie]

Cool tutorial, there are many other tutorials but this is definitely simple straight forward easy to understand one . I'd like to see how an authentic PhilipK texture is made , a breakdown of the various layers and how you make use of photos and stuff like that. A tutorial of that!

[PhilipK]

Thanks much appreciated that people like it.

[Skjalg]

omg, this is good shit phill~~!

oh and, what CJ said would be nice, too

[jaboo224]

Awesome work phil this is just what i needed !

[kleinluka]

Nice one. Stickied!

[Erratic]

Great stuff.

[Xanthi]

nice tutorial

[Nysuatro]

Thank you 1000 times Philipk

This is ooh so awesome.

[PhilipK]

Thanks

I'm gonna unsticky this too, I already got a sticky thread with all member tutorials in it Thanks anyway luka

[st0lve]

We need a tutorial to make a good defuse and specualr to go with the awesome normal map.

[Pericolos0]

excellent

This is how i do it aswel except I use a lighting setup instead of rendering it on a plane. With the lighting setup i have a constant normal map preview which is pretty useful

[Minos]

Awesome tutorial phill <3