Posts by PhilipK

Quote from FrieChamp

^ Agreed.

hot ir!

Thanks much appreciated that people like it.

Np Hessi, I added the ones I found on your site that covered 2d

Great stuff.

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.

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/nm1_s.jpg]

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):

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/nm2_s.jpg]

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:

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/nm2_5_s.jpg]

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.

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/nm3_s.jpg]

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:

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/nm4_s.jpg]

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:

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/nm5_s.jpg]

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.

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/nm6_s.jpg]

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.

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/nm7_s.jpg]

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:

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/nm8_s.jpg]

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".

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/nm9_s.jpg]

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.

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/nm10_s.jpg]

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

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/nm11_s.jpg]

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:

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/my_awesome_normalmap.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/mapcore/normalmap_tutorial/normalmaprender.jpg]

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.

Great stuff hessi.

I'll collect your 2d tutorials to the sticky now.

Been slow with that :\

Quote from SnipaMasta

I wish they'd give it up with that series. How many are they going to make?

To come to the actual tiling.

If using zbrush obviously your result will never tile superb, but just use the clone tool then

There are a lot of tools in zbrush for you to help keeping the geometry as tilable as possible.

More simple normals like flat planes stuff in max only shouldn't be too hard to get tilable

If you're not sure how it would look tiled just copy your whole object and put em next to each other a couple of times.

That hand turned out nicely slicky.

I dig it

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BHlLsoMdZLw

The plastic wrap

Well I guess I should've tweaked the specs a bit on the source version

But I also think some different lighting and cubemap placing can help a lot

Architecture looks very cool so far tho.

Yes this is the culling problem with 8-bit alpha.

Although your model doesn't seem that complex so I'm kind of surprised you get this. Perhaps there could be some other reason for it in this case.

But generally you would need to use 1-bit alpha instead (meaning you will use "$alphatest" 1 instead of "$translucent" 1).

This will make the model look jaggier in the edges because 1bit alpha is simply black and white.

The white stripes around it probably occurs when the texture starts to mip.

You could prevent this probably by having a background colour in the diffuse a colour that is close to the color of the leaves (in this case I'd chose a rather light green colour). This should help. Mip steps can be edited by hand tho, but shouldn't be necessary on this kind of texture.

Hope that helps.

lol

ooh neato start

the two last ones are gorgeous.

cool

yes

these things happens.

save frequently

What position btw?

Leveldesign?