[Sebastian]

I was wondering if the texture experts around here can tell me the best way to make a normal/parallax map in either Photoshop or Gimp. Or both.

I've been trying different methods, using the Normal Map filter thing you can download for Gimp and then opening up the image in Photoshop. Isolate the "lower" areas of the image and fading them out but it's incredibly difficult to make a realistic looking height map this way without the jaggedy edges.

Fucked up thing is I managed to do this flawlessly without even trying the first time around on an alien hive texture. Then I took a break from Duke and forgot what the hell I did to make it work. All the tutorials I've found talk about things like isolating the alpha channel habbela-habbela but there's not really any handy tutorial for a neanderthal as myself on this subject.

Prease herp.

[Roma Loom]

Basically it looks like this.

Heightmap tips: avoid "sharp edges" and rough (black-to-white) transitions.
Making several versions of normals via NVidia Filter with different scale and blur settings and then overlaying all them will make your final normalmap very deep.

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

[Hendricks266]

Tea Monster made a tutorial about this, didn't he?

[Sebastian]

I haven't seen any.

Roma Loom: Is the height map same as a parallax map? Because I thought that information got stored in the normal map alpha channel.

[Roma Loom]

Yeah. You should put the heightmap image in the alpha channel of the normal map to get parallaxmapping work in EDuke32.

[Sebastian]

In layman terms:

Copy and paste the heightmap (b&w) picture onto the normal map image and.. lower its opacity or sumzin sumzin? That doesn't sound right at all, but nothing rarely does in my head.

[Roma Loom]

I don't remember if GIMP has alpha channel access directly, but sure PS has:
http://clip2net.unet...5-clip-43kb.jpg

but if you try to save such a thing into PNG directly PS will 99% ignore the alpha channel (I personally use super PNG plug for photoshop), but you may save it to TGA - this will work, though TGA takes more hdd space.

To save an image with alpha channel into PNG without using super PNG plug you should create a mask for normalpmap layer and put the heightmap into that mask like this:
http://clip2net.unet...-clip-105kb.png

[The Commander]

What about saving as a .DDS format? (Yes EDuke32 can read these)

[Roma Loom]

My guess is: uncompressed DDS will be heavier in terms of file size than lossly compressed PNG. I'd rather use DDS for specmap using DDS singlechannel A8 format...

[Hendricks266]

The Commander, on Jul 30 2010, 03:06 PM, said:

What about saving as a .DDS format? (Yes EDuke32 can read these)

News to me.

[Sebastian]

The process is a hassle for sure, but the results are worth it.
Thanks Romeo!

[The Commander]

Wouldn't Crazybump would good and quickly enough for a texture like that?
As in organic/rock type textures.

[Sobek]

The Commander, on Jul 31 2010, 06:36 AM, said:

What about saving as a .DDS format? (Yes EDuke32 can read these)

That's what I'm using for anything that required Normal mapping or height mapping... It's comparatively similar in filesize to most PNG's so I'm quite happy with it.

Thanks for the note about using a mask layer to add the height map component to a PNG file Roma - I couldn't get that to work originally so I bailed and switched to DDS, but it'll come in handy I'm sure.

[Tea Monster]

basically, all that you are doing is creating a height map (which you can do in the NVidia filter) and adding that height map as the alpha channel of a regular normal map.

[Roma Loom]

Sobek, on Aug 2 2010, 03:42 AM, said:

That's what I'm using for anything that required Normal mapping or height mapping... It's comparatively similar in filesize to most PNG's so I'm quite happy with it.

That's strange unless you are using any kind DXT compression in DDS files which is quite bad for normal maps... because that kind of compression is not loseless unlike PNG compression.

[Sobek]

Roma Loom, on Aug 3 2010, 04:26 AM, said:

That's strange unless you are using any kind DXT compression in DDS files which is quite bad for normal maps... because that kind of compression is not loseless unlike PNG compression.

I export to DDS using Nvidia's DDS tools, and the export setting I use is;

Quote

DXT5 ARGB 8 bpp | interpolated alpha

I have a texture that's 1024x1024. Just the image (no heightmap) is 1.60mb when saved as a PNG. When saved as a DDS (with a heightmap present) using the above setting, it's just 1.0mb. Visually, I cannot tell a difference between the two, either ingame or not. I mean I'm not ignorant - I can look at a JPEG saved at 100% compared to a PNG and almost immediately get a sense for where the compression has had an impact... But in this case I honestly can't fault it.

[The Commander]

Sobek, on Aug 3 2010, 02:44 PM, said:

I have a texture that's 1024x1024. Just the image (no heightmap) is 1.60mb when saved as a PNG. When saved as a DDS (with a heightmap present) using the above setting, it's just 1.0mb. Visually, I cannot tell a difference between the two, either ingame or not. I mean I'm not ignorant - I can look at a JPEG saved at 100% compared to a PNG and almost immediately get a sense for where the compression has had an impact... But in this case I honestly can't fault it.

I also found the same thing, if I try to convert any of the .DDS files I am currently using to a .PNG they almost double in size.
https://edukeredalert.svn.sourceforge.net/s...tures/Textures/

Which makes me wonder why the HRP shouldn't all be converted to .DDS and probably shed about 100MB+ off the size.

[Roma Loom]

The Commander, on Aug 3 2010, 10:38 AM, said:

Which makes me wonder why the HRP shouldn't all be converted to .DDS and probably shed about 100MB+ off the size.

JPGs are even smaller...

[The Commander]

Roma Loom, on Aug 4 2010, 06:27 AM, said:

JPGs are even smaller...

But then we will loose quality...
Then what do I know about texture stuff and compression.

I just use .DDS because it works and it does not make all them GL_FALSE errors spam up in the console.

[Roma Loom]

Quote

The DXT compression formats use a lossy compression that can reduce an image's size by a ratio of 4:1 or 6:1

Imagine someone would want to modify such texture and it will be already with compression artifacts, so loseless PNG compression is the best choise imo.

[Tea Monster]

I've not played with them myself, but from what I hear, you have to be really careful when compressing as you can easily wind up with artefacts.

Just did a bit of searching - according to various sources, decompression is handled by hardware, which is faster than PNGs which get decompressed with software, and it automatically generates mipmaps (LOD for textures). So it might be worth looking into, especially with people bitching about load times for the HRP.