Those info tutorial things go together with some OSP packs
RomeOSP
OSP V3 plumes
in this sculpting age normal maps is probably the most important thing for every model you do
but what if you are not a modeler you haven't any sculpting program, but you can paint in 2d, could you get good normal map?
so here is the main scheme how every single model should be constructed
1)doing basic 3d model (newer start to do texture maps if you don't have real 3d model, exception could be only small ornaments)
2)sculpting high poly model or painting height maps in 3d
3) normal maps (with some kind of program :zbrush,xnormal, crazybump,or one of photoshop plugins, or a gimp nvidia plugin)
4) occlusion or displacement map (or both of them)
5)diffuse map
6)spectacular map
V3 hair based plume tutorial
Height maps normal maps occlusion maps
what height maps actually say to us
1) in this point mine height is 20
2) in this point mine height is 240
3) in this point mine height is 0
….
also you should know that height maps has no shadows no dirty no colors ornaments and no reflection lights and it is no matter what matterial it is metal leather wood, the only important thing is height
before you sending to an program with will generate your normal map do not forget fill background with darker light value (cause if you leave white you could get some troubles)
by the way if you know exactly what are you doing you could start even from 0 light value (if your height map go just up) or from 255 (if your height map go just down)
50% grey or 128 grey color light value is an general version for people who actually still don't know what they will do in future
displacement maps
should be very close to height map looking
but basic comands should be
like
1)go up
2)go down
3)do nothing
there is an picture how i understand the difference between height and displacement maps
what blue normal maps actually shows us?
normal maps is something like a program with 3 basic comands
1)go up (and how fast)
2)go down (and how fast)
3)do nothing
normal maps actually do not really shows us what height is in current point
like do nothing comand in height map position 0 and 128 and 255 are always the same color
so the only thing what could let us decide where we are is to count rises and falls in whole normal map till we get our position
warband standart blue normal maps is like +R|-G|+B
where the green channel is inverted
so in mostly programs you should do some minor changes like in xnormal (Swizzele Coordinates X+|Y-|Z+)
crazybump already had inverted green channel so if you use this software you don't need to do anything else
normal map rotation tool
sometimes when you doing some kind of ornaments you could get around it big bluring with will look very unnatural
so here is one method how to deal with it
normal maps edditing (i will update it afer 10 hours)
what occlusion maps says to us
1)occlusion map shows us points and lines where light reflections changes
basically crazybump has such thing like like convert from blue normal map to displacement map
but actually it wont work as i could see
cause what crazybump gets here is exactly the same as ambient occlusion map just in a bit different color palette
any way if you use crazybump and you do displacement map for your diffuse map improvement it will be quite good
some combination with it doing great deals
dds dxt compression's dxt
1)DXT1 :
it is 2 types with 1-bit alpha and without alpha
Blue Normal maps, spectacular maps and Diffuse maps without alpha channel should be saved always as DXT1
if in openBRF you see black models when normal map tag is on that means that you need to resave normal and spectacular map in dxt1 format (game works with dxt3 or dxt5 blue normal map to but you loosing free HDD space and performance in things like that)
2)DXT3-sharpened alpha channel and DXT5-interpolated alpha channel
it is used only in in 2 things diffuse map with alpha channel
and green normal maps
it uses 2x more HDD space than DXT1 (and it is just cause alpha channel takes a lot of details)
this formant do not have any difference for RGB values like DXT1 and DXT5 is exactly the same thing
RomeOSP
OSP V3 plumes
in this sculpting age normal maps is probably the most important thing for every model you do
but what if you are not a modeler you haven't any sculpting program, but you can paint in 2d, could you get good normal map?
so here is the main scheme how every single model should be constructed
1)doing basic 3d model (newer start to do texture maps if you don't have real 3d model, exception could be only small ornaments)
2)sculpting high poly model or painting height maps in 3d
3) normal maps (with some kind of program :zbrush,xnormal, crazybump,or one of photoshop plugins, or a gimp nvidia plugin)
4) occlusion or displacement map (or both of them)
5)diffuse map
6)spectacular map
V3 hair based plume tutorial
Height maps normal maps occlusion maps
what height maps actually say to us
1) in this point mine height is 20
2) in this point mine height is 240
3) in this point mine height is 0
….
also you should know that height maps has no shadows no dirty no colors ornaments and no reflection lights and it is no matter what matterial it is metal leather wood, the only important thing is height
by the way if you know exactly what are you doing you could start even from 0 light value (if your height map go just up) or from 255 (if your height map go just down)
50% grey or 128 grey color light value is an general version for people who actually still don't know what they will do in future
it is few ways to construct height maps
1) sculpting
2) painting in 2d
a)for lines : if you could select your lines for example you could use shrink (contract ) or grow(expand) selection tools and in every step increase(decrease) light value
b)duplicating layers decreasing the one layer with is on top light and using percentage eraser tool on darker texture( height map )
c)using retouch (in gimp doge:burn tool) (with ability do light-up or light down texture or height map area)
d)using gradients
e)airbrush tool (personally i don't use it but i heard that some people did it in the past)
1) sculpting
2) painting in 2d
a)for lines : if you could select your lines for example you could use shrink (contract ) or grow(expand) selection tools and in every step increase(decrease) light value
b)duplicating layers decreasing the one layer with is on top light and using percentage eraser tool on darker texture( height map )
c)using retouch (in gimp doge:burn tool) (with ability do light-up or light down texture or height map area)
d)using gradients
e)airbrush tool (personally i don't use it but i heard that some people did it in the past)
displacement maps
should be very close to height map looking
but basic comands should be
like
1)go up
2)go down
3)do nothing
there is an picture how i understand the difference between height and displacement maps
what blue normal maps actually shows us?
normal maps is something like a program with 3 basic comands
1)go up (and how fast)
2)go down (and how fast)
3)do nothing
normal maps actually do not really shows us what height is in current point
like do nothing comand in height map position 0 and 128 and 255 are always the same color
so the only thing what could let us decide where we are is to count rises and falls in whole normal map till we get our position
warband standart blue normal maps is like +R|-G|+B
where the green channel is inverted
so in mostly programs you should do some minor changes like in xnormal (Swizzele Coordinates X+|Y-|Z+)
crazybump already had inverted green channel so if you use this software you don't need to do anything else
normal map rotation tool
sometimes is situations that you have layered height map and it is not as good as it should be to get instace proper normal map
in such situation it is possbile to do height maps of different elements and latter combine it
sometimes for small ornaments it is also good to do an normal map with a lot bigger resolution than you need in such situation you could do an additional occlusion map to and latter resize all maps
higher resolution mostly doing much more detailed normal maps and also occlusion maps
so even when you resize it you could get like 5x better and more detailed result than doing it in simple way
in such situation it is possbile to do height maps of different elements and latter combine it
sometimes for small ornaments it is also good to do an normal map with a lot bigger resolution than you need in such situation you could do an additional occlusion map to and latter resize all maps
higher resolution mostly doing much more detailed normal maps and also occlusion maps
so even when you resize it you could get like 5x better and more detailed result than doing it in simple way
so here is one method how to deal with it
normal maps edditing (i will update it afer 10 hours)
what occlusion maps says to us
1)occlusion map shows us points and lines where light reflections changes
basically crazybump has such thing like like convert from blue normal map to displacement map
but actually it wont work as i could see
cause what crazybump gets here is exactly the same as ambient occlusion map just in a bit different color palette
any way if you use crazybump and you do displacement map for your diffuse map improvement it will be quite good
some combination with it doing great deals
dds dxt compression's dxt
1)DXT1 :
it is 2 types with 1-bit alpha and without alpha
Blue Normal maps, spectacular maps and Diffuse maps without alpha channel should be saved always as DXT1
if in openBRF you see black models when normal map tag is on that means that you need to resave normal and spectacular map in dxt1 format (game works with dxt3 or dxt5 blue normal map to but you loosing free HDD space and performance in things like that)
2)DXT3-sharpened alpha channel and DXT5-interpolated alpha channel
it is used only in in 2 things diffuse map with alpha channel
and green normal maps
it uses 2x more HDD space than DXT1 (and it is just cause alpha channel takes a lot of details)
this formant do not have any difference for RGB values like DXT1 and DXT5 is exactly the same thing
