Doom III Normal Maps
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Anyone know how they generate their normal maps? They are very detailed. Im guessing they somehow render a high detail version of a model to get the normal information. Then they create a low res version of the geometry on which to apply the texture and normal map.
Well personally I don''t know how they do it but I think that a good way to do it is the Photo Shop Plugin from nvidia, that works rather well for me.
There is a demo on this over at afrohorse.com, haven''t looked at the source, but the demo is pretty impressive.
-Luctus
-Luctus
I think there is a photoshop filter that you can download that does that sort of thing. IIRC I saw a link to nVidia's site for a download of it.
Here is the post with the links.
Henrym
My Site
[edited by - henrym on November 10, 2002 10:47:03 PM]
Here is the post with the links.
Henrym
My Site
[edited by - henrym on November 10, 2002 10:47:03 PM]
quote:Original post by henrym
I think there is a photoshop filter that you can download that does that sort of thing.
The photoshop filter isn''t the same thing. Doom III uses 3D geometry to generate normal maps, the photoshop filter converts a 2D image to a normal map using a sobel filter. You could render your geometry to a height map and then use a sobel filter on it, but the results wouldn''t be as good.
quote:Original post by ImpossibleAFAIK, only for the models. For wall texture normal maps, it would be overkill to make everything a 3d model first.
Doom III uses 3D geometry to generate normal maps
In an interview with one of the mappers\artists for Doom III somewhere I believe they said wall textures also start as 3D models. Really, it''s not overkill. It''s "more correct" and about the same work as drawing a texture in photoshop, if not less.
ATI has released a free normal map generator which i''ve been using and it works pretty nicely ^_^. It comes with plugins for Maya and 3DSMax, but also has the source so you can customize it for whatever program you want.
http://mirror.ati.com/developer/normalmapper.zip
http://mirror.ati.com/developer/normalmapper.zip
I heard somewhere tha this techinque is just acceptable for dark scenes because with scenes with better ilumination (day scenes) the models will look ugly due (not smoothly). Is that true ?
Thanks
Thanks
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