Bump-maps, Normal-maps, shininess, etc. primer

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 5:47 pm

Can't seem to edit the wiki anymore, but I put a post in the Contributor Help and internal How-To's forum,
to get the ball rolling; it's here:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... php?t=9346

Phlogios · Post by **Phlogios** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 6:38 pm

I already finished the Llama bump-maps.
Can someone help me convert them?

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 6:48 pm

I could, but better for you to learn how to do it; just download this plugin for Gimp and play with it:
http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/%7ecocidius/normalmap/

Phlogios · Post by **Phlogios** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 6:57 pm

ah crap, now I have to install gimp

I knew using photoshop would bring consequences.

Phlogios · Post by **Phlogios** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 7:00 pm

Didn't work, the plugin was win32. I guess that crippled the mac using contributors, didn't it?

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 7:09 pm

Google is your friend; "photoshop normalmap plugin" brings:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/phot ... ugins.html

Post by **loki1950** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 8:00 pm

@ Phlogios there's a source version of that Gimp plug-in

for the *nix and Mac people with gcc

Enjoy the Choice

Phlogios · Post by **Phlogios** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 8:49 pm

OMG!!! Downloaded gimp and I couldn't start it because x11 was missing. This happened on my previous computer aswell, and I can't solve it because I was totally sure I installed x11 and my MacOSX disc is gone since a while back.

Post by **loki1950** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 9:10 pm

If you are running Vegastrike don't you need x11 for it

it may be installed but the Gimp can't find it

Enjoy the Choice

Phlogios · Post by **Phlogios** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 9:22 pm

Thing is, I can't start GIMP at all.

Post by **klauss** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 9:59 pm

Haha...

Phlogios, you're missing x11-devel - what you need to build things that use x11.
But you have x11.

If you didn't install devel things, it will take you some time to setup a build environment.
I'd rather try to find a plugin for photoshop or whatever you use.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 10:03 pm

I already did; and posted a link to it, 6 posts ago.

Here's the normal map, anyways:

http://deeplayer.com/dan_w/tmp/llama_catamaranNORM.png

Phlogios · Post by **Phlogios** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 10:15 pm

Hellcat and I made it work! He downloaded the Gimp-plugin and he converted all the bump-maps. He took some gorgeous screens aswell. He will most likely post a new blog soon. This is a milestone fellas!

Phlogios · Post by **Phlogios** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 10:23 pm

You can see some of the photos here, note that the Connector is "unbumped" on some pictures.
Enjoy!

Http://uku.hansaworld.net/~gustav/Ships/VS/

Post by **hellcatv** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 10:34 pm

Chuck there was a problem with your normal map conversion---so maybe you can write about it since it was nonobvious...

when you bake a VS-compatible normalmap map you have to rotate it so your ship points to the north!
perturbations in green == movements in the y direction in a top down (or bottom up or right in) view
thusly you need to make sure that the ship points northerly

also I found a unique solution to the problem of reusing normal maps on rotated faces---apparently it doesn't come up at all with the VS way of doing things

the llama has rotated faces and I don't see any of the problems you reported when trying them in whatever 3d editor you used..

so anyway--- the solution to this is to cut out a square with the hull for your normal map and rotate that 90 degrees...then do the normal map calculations--then paste it back together...so everything flies to the north--- or upwards--in the image

Post by **klauss** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 11:42 pm

How hard would it be to add a tangent channel to bfxms?
I think it's really needed. Otherwise, only trivial bumpmaps are possible.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 11:45 pm

Ha! I had never heard about this VS standard. In fact, I came up with my own standard, very similar, whereby the front of the ship always faces to the left in the texture. If UP is it, not a problem. I'll just grab the whole UV unwrap and rotate it. Will that do for the Demon.
As for the llama, here I rotated the bumpmap counterclockwise 90 degrees, did the normalmap thing, rotated back clockwise 90 degrees. Will that do?
One problem I foresee is the little winglets that support the catamaranic sides, those are already unwrapped such that UP is front, so now they will have the wrong rotation.
http://deeplayer.com/dan_w/tmp/llama_catamaranNORM.png

EDIT: You mean per-vertex tangent? Yeah, that should be there I guess...

Post by **ace123** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 1:06 am

The wiki should work now... Sourceforge didn't have write access to their default session path (though I don't understand why there wasn't a reasonable default.)

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 6:57 am

Thanks, Ace! Working like a charm (for the first time, actually).
Done.
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... oToShaders