totally random texture thread

[insta]

Crackerjack maps?

[marque_pierre]

Guys... I am a little confused here. Bump maps versus normal maps.

I have been using bump maps since for ever, and I love them. Normal maps is a different beast. New kid on the block, can do more and some of the same stuff as your old fashioned bump map.

A lot of the talk I hear, is that normal maps have completely replaced bump maps in games engines. And you even have Photoshop plugins from nVidia that will convert a traditional black/white bump map to a normal map at the click of a mouse.

Is it over for bump maps?

[D3ads]

I thought bump and normalmaps were the same thing...

[von*ferret]

normals are numerous more interesting and advanced with slight performance hits I think. Eitherway I wouldn't bump something unless it could really use it, but did not deserve a normal. How often does that happen?

[mike-0]

i thought normal maps were compiled shadows rather than bumps being dynamic "rendering".

[Crackerjack]

Crackerjack maps?

EH?!

I actually used normals for these textures.. and the tile uses a spec map. But as for the history and where bumps are going.. I have no idea. I used the nVidia plugin for the tile and working on modeling a normal for the last diffuse there.

[kleinluka]

Normal maps have replaced bump maps pretty much everywhere....

the difference between bump and normal is pretty simple:

bump= creates illusion of bumpiness by making a pixel appear like its facing into a certain direction along an axis (x / y as represented by black and white)

normal= same idea except it's xyz and the black and white is replaced by RGB to make that possible. If you look at our sticky tutorial thread you will find a number of good links that will go more into detail about this.

[insta]

Thanks for the explanation. Been wondering about the difference for a while, as well.

[marque_pierre]

Normal maps have replaced bump maps pretty much everywhere....

Ahhhhhh dammit! Might as well start biting the bullet then. :roll:

[Crackerjack]

yeah and arent you doing textures for NW now marque?!!?!

[marque_pierre]

Talk about biting bullets.

Well, I got in on the tail end when NW was a very promising mod for HL1. Today it is a different beast altogether. I am in two minds about it now. It appears that every lab must be like your bog standard corridors from Doom3 with grey/brown grungy visuals no matter where, when and what the setting is. That is so not what I am about. Yes, I am officially on NW, I guess...

[evillair]

[marque_pierre]

evillair consider that the mortar between the bricks might have more chances of shining, since there will be crystal like particles in the mix. So adding a slight noise map to the mortar lines might be an idea.

Just a suggestion.

[kleinluka]

the normal map will distort that anyways...

[ginsengavenger]

How come you guys didn't know the difference between normal maps and bump maps. Don't you read up on anything?

Bump maps have been around forever in renderers but they never made it big in realtime game engines because they are very expensive. They are used to generate geometry at runtime which is used to figure out what direction a pixel on a face is "facing" (its normal) which is used to generate accurate lighting information.

A normal map uses three color channels to directly encode that normal into a single pixel of information so nothing has to be figured out at runtime. The pixel simply has to be lit based on whether it's "facing" a lightsource or not.

That's why there are PS filters to convert bump maps to normal maps, because if you can drop that step at runtime you gain much performance. There is really no difference in the results except for the performance gain in using normals over bumps.

It is not over for bump maps. It is very difficult to paint a normal map but it is much easier to paint a bump map. You will be painting bump maps and converting them to normal maps for game use.