Normal map creation

General Discussion
1

Hello i tried jme3test.material.TestParallax it has better graphics than skyrim and any other AAA game.


  1. The thing i wanted to know is how to create those normal maps.

    How do i combine the “normal map” and the “height map” to create the .dds file ?

    To be more specific in photoshop how do i put BrickWall_height.jpg in the “alpha channel”.


  2. BrickWall.j3m has the same BrickWall_normal.jpg, BrickWall_height.jpg that is inside the .dds file, but it has garbage graphics. Which means that jme only renders .dds files properly.



    I also have photoshop nvidia tools, if that helps.



    thank you,
2

For normalmaps made in photoshop i would suggest:

http://shadermap.com/shadermap_pro.php - it costs 20$. very cheap. But it’s really very powerful. I did 20 normalmaps textures during one hour.



For normalmap baking: blender, zbrush, xnormal.

3

i already have the normal map and height map they are BrickWall_normal.jpg, BrickWall_height.jpg files in jME3-testdata/Textures/Terrain/BrickWall.

i just need a way to combine them in a .dds file so that i can create BrickWall_normal_parallax.dds, because i need to learn the workflow of creating textures in jme.

4

@tralala you have a BrickWall_normal_parallax.dds file in the repo that is what you are looking for.

http://code.google.com/p/jmonkeyengine/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2Fengine%2Ftest-data%2FTextures%2FTerrain%2FBrickWall



I made it in photoshop.

I just combined the 2 png files (normal and height).

To do this in photoshop :

Open the normal map.

Then you have to go to the channels panel (usually bottom right, it’s a tab next to the layer panel tab)

You will see the 3 usual channels r,g,b, create a alpha channel en select it.

paste the height map png file into this channel.



then save your file as a dds with the nvidia tool (i think it has to be DXT5 to have the alpha channel, but not sure).

1 Like
5

thank you, i managed to do it.

Now i have another question, how did you manage to make it “smoother” and brighter in photoshop without lowering its quality ?

i tried gaussian blur and adjust brightness but it looks meh.

6

ok if i choose save as .dds and then “DXT5 Interpolated Alpha”, nvidia plugin miraculously finds the best “smoothness” and best “brightness” and looks exactly as yours.

Thank you, now i can have AAA textures !!!

7

CrazyBump is priceless… actually… it does have a price, but will produce (and allow you to adjust all setting with realtime preview) specular, normal, occlusion, diffuse & parallax maps. You load an image (and let it know what mapping the image is) and the rest are produced from that.

8

crazybump costs 300 or 400 $.



http://shadermap.com/shadermap_pro.php – it costs 20$



shadermap can produce all that things… ao, normal, parallax…

1 Like
9

http://shadermap.com/video.php?v=2



Video how it works. Just load diffuse or bump texrure…

10

There is bump->normal map and color->normal map converters in the SDK built-in texture editor. Furthermore you can create normal maps of high-detail models in blender and apply them to a low poly version (which is what this is actually made for, the “steep” mapping is actually just the “extreme” of this).

1 Like
11

Thanks for the info you two!

12

I must be lame. I paint my height maps in Photoshop and then use nVidia’s normal map filter to make my normal maps.



My pipeline doesn’t really have any blender assets yet, though. :slight_smile:

13

I still do that quite often… :slight_smile: Actually… more than not

14

My pipelein goes like this

→ Models with any loadable format (textures) having paralax height normal map diffuse alpha and if needed glow

→ using the compressonator to convert all textues to dds

→ Load all models, replace former textures with the dds ones

→ save as j3o alongside the dds files