I've been using Blender a lot recently, and, not wanting to front the money to buy a Normal Map generation program or (oh dear) use GIMP of all things, I decided to try creating a Normal Map in Paint.NET.
What is a Normal Map, you ask? Normal Maps are images that are used in conjunction with a texture to give the texture false 'depth', allowing, say, light to shine onto the bricks in a texture while not getting into the cracks between, or making light come from a specific side.
The original texture:
The normal map:
The result:
Not the best, as you can clearly see.
How could I make improvements? Is this even practical?
Im having a bit of an issue combining normal maps. Basically I am taking 3 normal maps that were rendered from a normal bake from three separate portions of the model... Using Photoshop i duplicate the layers over into a single file to avoid any overlapping or offsetting the maps, when previewing it inside MAX it does something crazy instead.
The maps display completely wrong even through the resolution and ratios are exactly the same. I have lined them up int the UV editor to verify. Do alpha maps in fact play a role im properly displaying combined maps (separating them from each other in a single file)? If this is the case, then how to i properly copy the alphas over into a single file using Photoshop?
I am trying to create a normal map from a model..when i goto "Render to Texture" and press render, i get an image with red color..In projection mapping, when i click on pick , i don't find anything to pick...create a normal map..
I have a problem when I extract the normal map of mudbox. I see on the result a degraded in the normal, then when i put on 3d max i see a shadow degraded... Maybe i have bad parameters in normal maps extractor. extract the normal map on mudbox where resolve this problems.
I'm modeling in mudbox 2012 and extracting my normal maps for 3ds max and my diffuse and bump as a PNG.In 3ds 2012 the normal map seems to be changing to the overal brightness of the diffuse, changing it noticeably darker.
It's been ruled out that its not a bump map that's causing so its definitely the normal map.
The same scene, same settings, produce 2 very different outputs in max 2011 and 2012, render to texture for normals is currently useless in max 2012.
The blue one is a correct tangent normal map created from a sphere in max 2011, the colored one is the the one created inside max 2012 from the same objects and settings, and the last is another sample of normals generated in max 2012.
I'm trying to create a bump map for use in 3D rendering (3ds Max). This is the diffuse map i've created:
Problem is, no matter how much i fuss around with exposure, curves, hight pass filter, this is all i'm getting:
As you can see it is very "jagged" and looks terrible when rendered. I tried to clean it, but despeckle doesn't do it. I need something clean looking, like this one:
What is the proper way of creating this kind of bump map?
I'm trying to simulate water in a community game I am building. I need to create a good number of frames to test one method, but I don't know how to go about it. Since these would be height (bump) maps, color is really not necessary. Basically, I need to create frame by frame to simulate water. The game engine will actually paste them together to form the animation.
The problem is I just don't know how I can go about creating the ripples frame by frame. I'd probably like to try to make 50 frames or so. I know about the ripple filters, but how would I use them to create a series of frames?
Basically I want to create a heightmap from a colormap (a game texture). Heightmaps are used by my shader to add additional detail to surfaces (see herefor a such a surface). This technique is called Relief Bump Mapping and produces pretty cool result if the shader gets a decent heightmap.
My problem is that I only have colormaps and want to create the heightmaps in Paint.Net. So far I simply played around with the contrast and and brightness of the picture, but the results are not perfect...
I uploaded some scaled down pictures which illustrate my problem a bit better:
This is my colormap texture:
If I am using my technique (changing contrasts and brightness) I don't get good results.
The red parts show the most problematic zones of the heightmaps. Since black means no height and white means height, these regions don't contain any height informations...I already thought about using a edgre filter, but the built in one doesn't seem to be very good.
I have for a long time struggled with obtaining hi resolution maps to include in my movies of trips I have done.
I have searched the internet for images of such maps for download and even used screen shots when using Google Earth.
I always wanted a higher resolution so that I could ZOOM in without the image becoming too fuzzy due to the fact that I was ending with an image of only (say) 512 x 288.
I am also a fan of FSX (M/S Flight Simulator) and recently taught myself how to create photo-realistic scenery which uses the TILES from Google Earth to create extra large (in pixels) images of parts of the world.
Today I realised that I could use the same to create images for maps to use in movies (I recently created an image around 5200 x 3000 pixels - the only limit to image size is how much memory you have and so using a 64bit processor and system works a lot.
It is named sBuilderX and it is available from [URL]....There is documentation within the zip file HOWEVER to create the image files for hires maps you will need to search for and download file make_photo-real_ground_textures_in_fs_x.zip which is available as a free download at [URL]...
You may need to join the web site (FREE) to enable the download.
Within sBuilderX you can choose to use Google Earth or or Microsoft Live Virtual Earth, terrain or streets. Also note that the image files are BGL files only however you can change those to JPG if required.
Hope this may have useful for few people who like to include hires maps (which they can use zoom without loosing sharpness) in their movies.
I would like to know if I can import my AutoCAD 3d file into 3DS MAX, with the lighting maps and material maps intact. This is because I am doing my thesis on AutoCAD 2011 but I would like to use 3DS Max to do a walk through video.
I have this HUGE maps I have to import to create pan and zooms. The file is a PNG with a resolution of 25000 x 16400px. Smoke doesn't play nice when I import this dil. It's all black and won't render. If there a max file resolution in Smoke? Or is it a problem with PNG files? (I tried with PSD adn it did the same).
Texturing an .obj file with multiple maps keeps getting overlap when I paint on the figure.
I am very new to 3D Painting in Photoshop but I am nominally knowledgeable of Photoshop in general for 2D work. I exported the Genesis figure from DAZ Studio into an .obj file and painted on it in Photoshop 5.5.
When I paint on his face, other marks show up on his torso and thigh and eyes, even. It is like all of the diffuse maps are "stacked upon one another" (though not in layers, just one one layer.)
Ideally I would like to use the nVidia normal map filter plugin - it's for Photoshop, and although, apparently, you can use some photoshop plugins, this one does not seem to work.
First question - is there a way to use the nVidia plugin?
Next - is there a Corel way?
I have created my own greyscale heightmap images and I can export red channel for alpha. Then I flood fill the red channel black and the blue channel white and export the RGB as the colour part. Creating a dds image gives me a pseudo bumpmap
BUT
Whenever I use this kind of bumpmap I get the effect I want on the aircraft models, but for some reason, "my" bumpmaps seem to remove the polygon smoothing of the 3D models so that when I "fly" the aircraft, I actually see the polygons instead of the smotthed mdl surface.This photbucket link shows what I mean.
The left hand image shows the original bumpmap on the original model. The next image shows modified artwork on the same model. Then I have change to a "D-i-Y" bumpmap and the last two show that although the desired bumps are there, I now have the wireframe polygons visible.
If I have two images, one is a texture map and the other is a normal map, how do I essentially paste the normal map into the alpha channel?
The stuff I am importing into (OpenSimulator) uses a single image to put texture and normal map information onto an object but so far I can't see anywhere to create the alpha channel.
I am not using the alpha channel for transparency, which seems to be a source of confusion (elsewhere). The thing is I CAN use it for that (transparency I mean) simply by making part of my image transparent (This is splendid by the way, and is yet another reason why I adore Paint.Net), this implies to me there are alpha channels or that the transparency thing is something different.
I will receive a 2D object and a normal pass. And from that I need to create some shperical image that will be mapped on to the image without being in 3D space. I know it's somehow possible in Fusion using some global pointers. Is something similar possible in Smoke?
Smoke 2012 SAP2 SP4 and Smoke 2013 SP2 (Smoke Classic Keyboard Shortcuts) Mac Pro 4,1 OS X 10.6.7 12 GB RAM NVIDIA Quadro 4000 14 TB RAID (Areca)
In my version of X6 32-bit, there is a problem with the icons in Print Layout, they're not the normal icons, but one's used when tying as script to an icon.
I have re-set X6, using the Shift key method, but the problem is still there. I can use the menus and print, but those icons don't belong there.
What I need is to be able to resize normal sized images taken from a standard camera down to 504x104 pixels. All I've managed so far is to distort the images is there a way I can avoid this?
if is possible to create the paint drips in the attached design. I really want to learn how to create urban designs, is corel paint shop x3 suitable for that?
how to add refletion to a material. In Cinema 4d I can simply click and reflection and adjust the parameters and i have it, but 3ds max is more complicated and has more things. So i go to "maps", check the box for "reflection", than i have to choose a map. But i want a map that gives me total reflection everywhere, no falloff or things like that. What map do i have to choose?
So I somehow managed to add multiple libraries to my material editor. I think I didn't realize they were added so I kept adding them. Now I want to delete them because I'm not using them, and they just get in the way for when I'm trying to get to the default maps.
I have installed LR4 X64 on a brand new Windows 7 ultimate laptop. I can't see the maps. I have updated to LR4.1 RC still can't see the maps. I have checked the firewall logs and added LR to allowed programs. Still no luck. I have turned the firewall (Windows) off. Still no luck. All other app access the internet OK. Other features in LR can access the internet OK, e.g. ftp to my website. I have searched google and this seems to be a problem for others with the X64 version.
In my old version of CorelDraw 7 there was a set of cliparts in the third CD with a lot of country and continent maps. I cannot find them anymore in CorelDraw X3.
i've tried using image ready... is there any way that i can make the text itself into an image map? i mean... i don't want to have to draw a rectangle around the text... or make guidelines around the text.... is there any way i can make the actual text into an image map?
