Realtexture Game Packs

[Springheel]

Do we have any contributors or wannabees who can work on the normalmaps? That would be a nice, easy job to farm out to someone, rather than pulling our main mappers and skinners away from their other jobs.

[SneaksieDave]

OMG.

 

*faints*

 

No normal maps? *wakes up*

[Renzatic]

It doesn't make sense that the guy would send everything BUT the gameready textures. The 4 disc DVD edition is supposed to contain everything he has to offer within...maybe the normals are just stuffed on one of the discs somewhere.

[BlackThief]

well I can't find any normalmaps here's the content of the 4 DVDs:

 

DVD one:

1: 26 high dynamic rage radiance interior and exterior locations

2: 24 high dynamic range radiance exterior locations

3: 24 high dynamic range radianc interior locations

 

DVD two:

1: materials vol1. 200+ photo textures, multi resolution, multi-layer

2: materials vol2. 200 photo textures, multi resolution, multi-layer

3: solar system, up to 10800x5400 px specularmaps, bumpmaps, clouds with bump and alpha

 

DVD three:

1: materials vol3. 200 photo textures, multi resolution, multi-layer

2: materials vol4. 225 photo textures, multi resolution, multi-layer

3: materials vol5. 170 photo textures, multi resolution, multi-layer

 

 

DVD four:

1: 169 backgrounds lossless TIFFs urban and natural

2: 200 backgrounds lossless TIFFs sunrise, sunset, cloudy sky

3: 225 backgrounds lossless TIFFs urban, industrial, absract, details

 

I browsed manually through the tifs, but I can't find any normalmaps.

[Renzatic]

Well shit...

 

How well do the bumpmaps convert to normalmaps? If they make the transition pretty well we won't have much to worry about, if not then we might still have to buy the game editions.

 

Edit: I just ran the bumpmap on the previous page through the NVPlugin...seemed to turn out pretty alright. I can't give a definitive answer til I test it out in D3 though, but it should do.

 

At worst we can do what Odd suggested and use the bumps and displacement maps and tweak the geometry from there. Either way we should have just about everything we need to not only get them ingame, but to make them look damn good as well.

 

[Corth]

 

low lights suck, higher lights are better

 

edit: wait, Renz, you forgot to invert the Y axis, it actually does look good from each angle I'll post new results soon

[Corth]

 

I should have noticed the inverted Y earlier

[Springheel]

That looks good to me. Maybe we can use the heightmaps then.

[Dram]

That looks pretty sweet i think.

[SneaksieDave]

Hrm. So. Does anyone actually know the difference then, for sure? Between bump and normal, I mean. Hopefully it's not just one of degree, because then they'll all look great, just shallow.

[Renzatic]

The shallowness is probably my fault, I only used a depth of 6 when I made the normal using the NV plugin.

 

It looks pretty good to me, but it's hard to tell without the diffuse on top.

 

Hrm. So. Does anyone actually know the difference then, for sure...Between bump and normal, I mean

 

Bumpmaps judge depth by shades of grey, normalmaps don't actually judge depth at all...just curvature and slants.

 

Like if you were to make a model using 90 degree angles only it'd show up as a solid blue object when you normal it. But if you put even a slight slant on it then you'll start seeing differences.

 

If you were to make a model with an angle like this...

 

 

...it wouldn't show up when you go to render the normal, it just doesn't see it. You'd use angles like that for heightmaps.

 

But if you were to add a slight slant to it like this...

 

 

...it'd appear in the normalmap.

 

Clear as mud, huh?

[oDDity]

The heightmaps are usually just the color image with the color drained and the levels adjusted a little, you could do it yourself in 10 seconds anyway.

[Renzatic]

There's a bit more to it than that. I've tried taking some of our previous textures, converting them to B&W, and running them through the normalmapper, and the end results wern't nearly as exact as what you're seeing above.

[Darkness_Falls]

Is someone asking him if we could send these back and get the normalmapped ones? Might be worth a try... Since he was happy to help us before.

 

Also, I'm not sure if we should be publicing this windfall on the external site for everyone to see, unless Daniel's okay with it. I'd just hate for him to get inundated by modders wanting the DVDs for free, too...

[BlackThief]

Is someone asking him if we could send these back and get the normalmapped ones?  Might be worth a try...  Since he was happy to help us before.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I think that's too late now - there was a seal on the DVD box, so he wouldn't be able to sell the box again.

 

Also, I'm not sure if we should be publicing this windfall on the external site for everyone to see, unless Daniel's okay with it. I'd just hate for him to get inundated by modders wanting the DVDs for free, too...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I agree with that - we shouldn't publish the name of the company, till the mod is released. Then they'll get their credits.

[Springheel]

Also, I'm not sure if we should be publicing this windfall on the external site for everyone to see, unless Daniel's okay with it. I'd just hate for him to get inundated by modders wanting the DVDs for free, too...

 

I don't see the difference between publicizing it now or later, but I'll change it for now.

[New Horizon]

I don't see the difference between publicizing it now or later, but I'll change it for now.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, he may suddenly be hounded for free textures because..."you gave them to those guys, why aren't we worthy?"...I wouldn't want to see that happen. It was really generous of him to donate these resources.

[Corth]

The heightmaps are usually just the color image with the color drained and the levels adjusted a little, you could do it yourself in 10 seconds anyway.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Actually heightmaps ARE bump maps. They do exactly the same thing.

 

As for a little visual between bumps and norms:

 

The bump maps tell the rendering engine that the geometry actually has more depth and it should be showing the final image as such (unlike displacements where the engine has to create a new layer of geometry).

 

Normal maps -fake- depth by telling the geomtry which direction light bounces back.

 

 

Edit: here's a comparison between bump and norm with the texture just used link.

[oDDity]

What are you telling me that for? I obviously know the difference between heightmaps, bunpmaps and normal maps already. How do you think I got those 8 characters into Doom - by accident?

I know more about rendering and tecxtuing in CG than anyone else on the team.

[New Horizon]

OH MY GOD!!! IT'S HIM!!!!

 

RUNS AWAY.

[SneaksieDave]

Interesting. So looking at the screenshot link, it kind've suggests that bumpmaps can look deep, but aren't affected by the light in ways one would expect in the real world, while normalmaps are. So, if the normal maps for these textures are batch-built from these bumpmaps, they will forever be substandard and half-assed incorrect.

 

Or no?

[Corth]

That post wasn't JUST for you, or else I would have used a PM. You sure do think highly of yourself though (plus there's a bit more to hight/bump maps than that )

 

SneaksieDave, We could definitly get away with a batch conversion of bump to normal, but we'd have to be careful how some of them were lit, because the Nvidia filter takes away the sharpness of the bump map depending on how deep you want it to look. In the example pic, they both have a depth of 4 (normal depth=4 bump depth =0.4) and the normal side looks alot more washed out.

[sparhawk]

Well, he may suddenly be hounded for free textures because..."you gave them to those guys, why aren't we worthy?"...I wouldn't want to see that happen.    It was really generous of him to donate these resources.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The best thing is to ask him. After all it IS some advertising for him, and he may be annoyed thinking we don't want to give credits.

[Darkness_Falls]

Yeah, I think he'd be totally cool about us asking about it. Maybe he just didn't realize how beneficial and what a timesaver it would be for us to have the normalmapped versions. Maybe we could repay him by putting a cool animated splash screen at the intro of our campaign and/or toolset, showing his logo(s) and some cool sound effects: "Industry Graphics logo: Creating worlds the way they're meant to be... (pause)... Textured." (pause) -- "Textures provided by RealTexture.com."

 

Or something like that. I'm sure we could pull off something professional and sweet; not cheesy.

[Springheel]

The guy sent us the 4DVD package...it's likely the same one they sell. Doesn't make much sense that he'd intentionally leave stuff out. Chances are they mean heightmaps when they say normalmaps in the description.

 

The most significant question is whether or not we can make decent normalmaps from the provided heightmaps. I suspect the answer will be yes, for some of the textures, and no for others. So let's separate them into those two categories. I don't mind doing some grunt work using the PS plugin.