Bridge Commander Central
BC Forums => BC Modding => Topic started by: Raven Night on March 01, 2009, 01:42:39 AM
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Just a quick inquiry. Im working on the Warhammer, and would like to add bump maps to this model, to go along with my speculars. Are they supported in BC, and if so what is the recommended format?
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nope, Bump maps are not supported in BC,
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nope, Bump maps are not supported in BC,
lame
no bump maps, no normal maps?
god we need a new engine...
HEY WAIT!!!
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You can add them to the textures though. Jb has managed it on several ships. I think its just applying them as a bump layer in Photoshop.
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You can add them to the textures though. Jb has managed it on several ships. I think its just applying them as a bump layer in Photoshop.
Bump layer?? I am unfamiliar with this, as far as I know to have bumps on a ship you can ether have a bump map, and assign it to the material rollout to allow max to bump the texture. Or you can phsically draw the bump effect yourself with bevells. Or.. you can bump map and then bake the textures to your model.
If their is another way I would like to read about it :)
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Jb would be far more adept to explain it than me.
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If you have Photoshop or GIMP: (this is for GIMP and I imagine its similar for Photoshop as well),
1. Open up the textures
2. Go to "Filters"
3. Go down to "Maps"
4. Select the one called "Bump Map"
5. Play with settings
6. Finish
7. Add on your alpha or whatever.
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You can add them to the textures though. Jb has managed it on several ships. I think its just applying them as a bump layer in Photoshop.
but BC will ignore that new layer with bump maps, am I right ?
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That will result in kind of strange bumps.
Rather go for the beavel-method.
If you have your textures in *.psd format, select the part that should "stick-out" and go to blending-settings on the layers and add the beavel-effect. (play with teh settings of course. ;) )
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You can add them to the textures though. Jb has managed it on several ships. I think its just applying them as a bump layer in Photoshop.
but BC will ignore that new layer with bump maps, am I right ?
No, you are not right. It's part of the texture. Heres my original Arcadia with bumps. I never released the Arcadia with bumps and I think you can tell the difference.
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No offense but I can't see any change. Might just be the resolution but it just looks the same to me. :S
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Look at the name and reg. Notice how it appears to be embedded into the hull? And also the windows, instead of them being little round blocks, they appear to be sunken into the hull.
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I am looking, and I don't see it. I'm gonna assume it's my resolution being high and the image not, because it just looks like it's rescaled the image and distorted everything.
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Must be you.
You can clearly see the bumps at the windows and those little grey squares (just above teh reg).
But tbh, the reg should never be bumped.
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I know, I was just screwing around with bumps at the time :P.
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heh I see it. :)
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but thats just a texture effect, isnt it? not a real effect that responds to lighting. right?
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This is the only way for bumps. You're probably thinking about speculars FoaS. Speculars respond to lgihting and its bloody cool when it works :D!
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Normal bumps also respond to lighting (Legacy) but not in BC as the engine is too old and thus isn't supporting bump/normal-maps.
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This is the only way for bumps. You're probably thinking about speculars FoaS. Speculars respond to lgihting and its bloody cool when it works :D!
no, I'm thinking of bump maps or normal maps, which respond to lighting too. What I mean is that if you have a light on the left part of the ship, will your bump-techinque respond to the light being on the left? or are you basically "baking" the bump map into the diffuse as a bevel.
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You can fake the effect by baking the bumps into the texture and by insuring that the "bumpped" areas are black in the specular file, that is about as close to normal/bumps you are going to get.
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You can fake the effect by baking the bumps into the texture and by insuring that the "bumpped" areas are black in the specular file, that is about as close to normal/bumps you are going to get.
:arms: What I said.
But no, BC's engine is to old for lighting to show up bumps. And it doesn't really make much sense for that to happen anyway. The ships would just look odd.
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:arms: What I said.
Not quite. :P
The ships would just look odd.
Do explain, I think normal maps look quite nice when done right.
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It looks odd if teh light ingame actually come from a different direction as one would presume by looking at teh beavels...
:arms:
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yeah... i know what you mean. the light comes from one corner, but the bumps on the textures make it look like its from another.
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Well, the reason bumps would be great on Klingon ships is it makes the panels look much more realistic...easy weathering that way. The difference is quite dramatic, and can be controlled by either turning up or down the amount in the texture control box or cleaning up a specular map a bit to make the bumps cleaner.
I will post shots on the difference...here I am just using the speculars for bumps, obviously this makes it too dirty, so the map would have to be cleaned up a bit, but you get the idea.
Notice how HOK 1 is very smooth, HOK two much rougher with more pronounced paneling, especially on surfaces in direct contrast to a light source. This gives the ship a more realistic overall feel, and with the right bump maps can add proper weathering and scarring.
Speculars are good, but they really just add luminosity, or shine to panels when in direct light instead of depth.
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Yeah, it does look neato, but BC dont support it :(.. and I think your textures would not benefit from baking those bumps on to be honest, as you have drawn so much depth and detail anyway. keep in mind for legacy ;)
Normal bumps also respond to lighting (Legacy) but not in BC as the engine is too old and thus isn't supporting bump/normal-maps.
So Legacy supports Normal Maps? is this correct?
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legacy has bumps... yes
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But not normal maps?
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Actually the same.
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Actually the same.
Urm actually not. Their is a massive difference between normal maps and bump maps....
:arms:
anyway, im assuming legacy does not support normals.
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It's labeled as "Bump" but it uses Normals after all.
http://wbs.nsf.tc/articles/article11_e.html
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Ok guys, technical explanation:
1st - there are no bump maps in bc, nor in any other engine. Bump maps are not supported by any real time application. BTW, bump maps are greyscaled maps that are used to add faked depth, where black is 0 depth and white 100% depth, and how stronger that "bump" will be depends on the rendering method and intensity.
2nd - Games use normal maps instead, which are are RGB textures which are used to determine the way the light will reflect on the surface based on the normal variations. Colors work as axis on the basic vector for the normal (R=X, G=y, B=z) and as normals are usually perpendicular to the surface (x=0,y=0,z=1) normal maps tend to be blueish
3rd - BC does not support normal maps at all, and no, there's no way to implement then, because the GFX are hardcoded on the engine.
4th - All those above are only rendering fakes, acting on how the light affects a surface, none of them adds real details, like CG rendering displacement, which again, is not supported by realtime applications.
5th - There are no "bump maps" or "bump filter" at all in photoshop. The filter the guys are speaking is called "bevel and emboss", and it's used to fake the lighting border effect in a surface. If you are using windows, you can see that effect on the frame of the very window you are looking at. It consists in add an imaginary light source and put a highlight border and a shadow border over the object edges.
6th - That technic is been used to fake bumpiness in game models since the models started having textures back in wolfenstein 3d in.. hmm.. early 90's, so it's not "noones technic" here nor was invented by some genius at this forums.
7th - This method allows a very good depth faking, but does not react at all to the light (you are using a painted diffuse only, so there's no way!!!), so it must be combined with speculars and normal maps if possible for better results.
In BC, you can get a decent result using speculars combined.
8th - Legacy supports normals. Thought i rather not speak of that game and it's GFX (personnaly i hate both, but that's only my very personal opinion).
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Thanks for clearing that up.
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So, GIMP having a thingy under Filters/Maps/Bump Map is just like shortcutting beveling and embossing? Just double checking for my sake...
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Bump maps are not supported by any real time application.
5th - There are no "bump maps" or "bump filter" at all in photoshop.
Photoshop CS4's 3D mode allows you to paint bump maps directly onto a 3D model. Pretty sure that counts as a real time application, could be wrong though. It also produces the greyscale bump maps as opposed to the more colourful normal maps.
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There are real-time engines that support bump maps, but its simply not as powerful as normal maps.
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Cookie for Legacy for clearing that all up. Much appreciated. :D
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Photoshop CS4's 3D mode allows you to paint bump maps directly onto a 3D model. Pretty sure that counts as a real time application, could be wrong though. It also produces the greyscale bump maps as opposed to the more colourful normal maps.
Hm, no, that's a painting method, not a realtime renderer.
Ok it may even be a realtime renderer, but it's only a model viewer.
And yes, it produces a greyscale bump, which is just used as a renderer asset, not something you can use in a game or visualizer.
It's a painting tool, also a very GFX expensive one ( which in my machine is not really realtime, which is the reason i still avoid using it)
See, you are not free to rotate the model like you do in a 3d application, when you do rotate it, it'll recalculate everything and give you another 2d view of it.
Reason for that, is that it's precalculation and rendering the bumps effect max and min for that angle, and then interpolating what you paint, and not really doing then at realtime. That's why it's so chunky for you to change the model view.
There are real-time engines that support bump maps, but its simply not as powerful as normal maps.
Are you really sure of that?
If you point me one I'll stand back on my assertment, but as far as i know, there are no engines that will render a bump map in real-time without converting it to normals.
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In a way, bumpmaps are fake normal/paralax maps. "Good enough" on old hardware, but simply old stuff. You can even fake bumpmaps on even older hardware.
Bumpmaps are an approximation. They have artifacts, they are inferrior. A play of textures.
Actually similar to paralax mapping, except that it's implemented on a per pixel basis where the pixel is "moved".
http://nehe.gamedev.net/data/lessons/lesson.asp?lesson=22 about bumpmapping.
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So then, what's scoop with applications like CrazyBump
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So then, what's scoop with applications like CrazyBump
Make bumps, then convert then to normal maps :P
You can't paint over normal maps the same way you can paint on bumps.
When you look at a bump map, you can easily see the depth by understanding the greyscale.
Unless you have a pretty well trained eye (much more than i even imagine i have) you won't be able change a normal map by painting on it, unless it's a matter of minor fixes.
Also, grayscale maps are used on a much more usefull thing that is called "displacement maps", which only work on powerfull CGI render engines, which precalc subdivisions of the faces and then move those fake vertexes based on the displace map to create a real relief (which exists only during render time), and then precalc the lighting over all that subdivided surface.
Results on those are amazing as the geometry is actually deformed, and you won't lose the effect at the edges as a bump or normal, which are texture artifacts.
The drawback is the huge rendertime.
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1st - there are no bump maps in bc, nor in any other engine. Bump maps are not supported by any real time application.
Just wanted to jump in here: Bump maps are absolutely used in (older) engines and real time applications. They are not used much any more save in sparingly in some instances on the wii (we used them in house of the dead) as normal maps have direction lighting capabilities as well.
Bump maps only deal with depth.
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Well, I usually do all of my bevel work and shadows by hand, and the results from generating them are usually hit or miss. Im no expert of course, but ive gotten pretty comfortable with it. All of the details on my maps are either hand drawn or grabbing pics (like machinery), making some adjustments and turning them into greebles.
Bump mapping, at least for renders in Max seem to add more depth than my work, increasing overall realism. Speculars only seem to add shine when in direct light.
That may be oversimplifying it, but its what Ive noticed sofar.
Since it doesnt use bump maps, is there any way to add the shadow nuances that bump mapping does? I would hate to increase poly levels with panels modeled in...I would like to find an artistic method to add more depth than I have at present.
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Since it doesnt use bump maps, is there any way to add the shadow nuances that bump mapping does? I would hate to increase poly levels with panels modeled in...I would like to find an artistic method to add more depth than I have at present.
Find another engine. :arms:
Well, it's sad, but the only way to add anything that will affect a model like a pannel would do in bc is the specular, which is not much of a change, but helps to fake different surfaces and depths.
You can also use a bit of drop and inner shadows into the surfaces to fake the depth, helps a bit too.