str8g8 on 19/8/2008 at 12:41
Thanks for sharing your methods, I think it is very useful for people to compare how they do things, hopefully we can all learn something.
What you are all describing is various ways of creating a height map, which is to become the basis of the normal map. The more time and effort you are able to put into the height map the better the normal maps will be.
Layering up the the normal maps with overlay is quite a good way of increasing the depth, and probably less invasive than what I do (ie, it preserves your original). What I do though is go into the channels and adjust the levels ... auto levels will also give you the max contrast in that channel. Though you should normalise afterwards.
What you refer to as the curvature is the hard bit I think, and the bit that crazybump is good at. For instance, I haven't found a way of keeping the image tileable when you blur it (this is in photoshop) so it is always a pain.
The final layer is then a texture layer, to add a bit of fine detail to the image.
Beleg, I think what was letting your texture down was the resolution of the plasterwork texture behind the timbers, try and find a 1024 one from the repository and use that (as Judith has done I think). Also remember that when you create the height map, the image should be inverted - that is to say, if you want the beams to be infront of the plaster, then they need to be white, and the plaster black (or at least very dark). Other than that, it will make a very solid addition to the repository!
Judith on 19/8/2008 at 16:39
Generally I think that in case of textures with timbers we always have to sacrifice something. While working with Beleg's texture I couldn't get both a proper response to light source and the illusion of plaster behind the timber, at the same time. Actually the same goes for your texture, Str8g8 ;) The depth looks nice, but normalmap gives a wrong response to a light source moved vertically & horizontally too (at least in Gimp normalmap plugin). I'm not against such textures but I guess it would be better simply to replace beams with static meshes, as they don't hurt performance that much and look better.
[Edit] Funny, while the light is moved horizontally in T3ed, it works fine, so there's something wrong only with vertical light movement.
Beleg Cúthalion on 19/8/2008 at 16:55
The plaster is the reason why I exchanged it with JohnP's TENwall512B. Unfortunately the beams are some kind of deco thing and we would not have a pretty wood pattern/texture even if the photo was better. Looks like a dowel. Plus, these half-timbered textures are always a pain to work with when it comes to windows etc., but as I said I like how it looks now. :)
The normal map is due to Crazy Bump's 30 days still an older one, but it looks OK, subtle enough and so on. I guess making professional textures is a way too complicated thing for me, but one thing I wanted to try was to compare the drawn textures to realistic ones, two pictures, same scene etc.. I don't really believe they look too strange with T3Ed although Judith keeps persisting in that. :p After all, no matter how much I like for instance John's CEMwall512B texture, with the time its LEGO look gets too obvious. :erg:
str8g8 on 26/8/2008 at 15:40
Hmm, I thought the normals were ok ...
When testing them in gimp, are you sure it uses the normal map info in the same way as T3? As you probably know there isn't a set way to interpret normal map data, so different packages and games do it in different ways ... very confusing!
I agree with you about the beams though, I think these textures will be more useful for stuff you don't see up close.
Beleg Cúthalion on 26/8/2008 at 20:37
Quote Posted by str8g8
I agree with you about the beams though, I think these textures will be more useful for stuff you don't see up close.
Well, I have them on ground level also, but IMHO they don't really look bad... or at least not worse than the rest. I don't think we've reached the uncanny valley of textures yet, so the player might build his own believable world with the
suggstions of my humble textures. Or something like that. :p
str8g8 on 27/8/2008 at 08:49
@ Judith: That looks right to me! If you compare it to the diffuse the textures, the dark beams are being lit correctly from all sides ...
:confused:
Judith on 27/8/2008 at 09:13
Str8g8 - maybe then it's something with my eyes ;) Because I see that in some cases the beams are concave not convex (second and fourth shot), and the highlights are on the opposite side to the light source... Anyway, it's not a big problem because T3ed seems to interpret this normalmap correctly, at least when it comes to horizontal light movement, and that's the most important thing, I guess - torch guards don't walk vertically ;)
Btw. The site is almost ready, just some minor tweaks here and there. I already got permission from GBM to "advertise" it on both editors' forums, so expect some announcement soon ;)
Linda on 24/10/2014 at 20:23
The str8g8's site was unfortunately closed, where do we can recover his stuff?
