Bump mapsīump mapping adds an illusion of depth and texture to images. As convention it’s recommended that you add “_d” to the end of the texture’s filename. Generally, the smoother a surface is the less light is diffused and the brighter your diffuse map can be.ĭiffuse maps are added to material shaders by use of the Diffusemap keyword or the Blend keyword with the “diffusemap” parameter. In that respect, it’s a good idea to darken your diffuse maps appropriately. No surface reflects light back at the same intensity it’s recieved. The example to the right demonstrates this as the bricks themselves are a greyish value and the cracks between them almost black. For instance, the cracks in a brick wall absorb more light than they reflect back. The goal when creating a diffuse map is to draw a color map and darken areas where light would be absorbed. In other words they define the color and intensity of light reflected back when it strikes a surface. Missing image: /w/images/thumb/6/64/Diffuse_example.jpg/180px-Diffuse_example.jpg An example diffuse mapĪn example diffuse map (Click to Enlarge)ĭiffuse maps in Doom 3 represent the diffuse reflection and color of a surface. Note: Quake 4 only: You can also use guides to simplify writing many materials that behave the same way. Stage specific material shader keywords are listed in this article. Global keywords used in material shaders are indexed in this article. The basic syntax of material shaders is explained here. This will help you understand and write them: This makes texturing more work than it was in the past, but it also gives much more power and flexibility to the developers.Ĭheck the following links to learn more about the syntax of material files for Doom 3. The general concept in the id Tech 4 family is to use material shaders which in turn use multiple images, each representing a different property of a surface. You can easily dial back the amount of texture a highly detailed normal map creates in your render application, but you can't add texture to a normal map that lacks definition.In older games, a single image qualified as a texture and all that was required was that you simply drop the corresponding image into a specific folder. I find that it's best to overdo things a little so you have a wider range of texture options when you create your material. Whichever plug in you use, you can use the bump texture created above as the basis for your normal map. There is a basic plug in by Nvidia, bit if you want more control then nDo works very well. You can create normal maps from scratch in Photoshop, but it's frankly a lot easier to use a plug in. The results should be more precise and much cleaner. Finally add a slight Gaussian blur as before. Fill the base layer with white and flatten. To get a cleaner look use the circular marquee tool to create precise circles on a new layer and line them up with those in the original texture. When it comes to applying the displacement map to your Thea material, you may find that the displacement is a bit rough around the edges (see below). You don't want to displace all the fine detail, so use the marquee tool to block fill everything but the holes and then use a small soft brush to paint out the remaining detail surrounding the holes.įinally soften the edges with a little Gaussian blur (Filter>Blur>Gaussian blur). Bear in mind that the white areas will be displaced and the black areas will be recessed. Adjust the slider until all you can see are nice clean casting holes. You can use your bump texture as the basis for a displacement map. If you don't want a lot detail then you can exaggerate the light tones even further with some added contrast. Reflectance Mapsįor the reflectance map you start by desaturating your seamless texture (Shift + Ctrl + U) and then use levels to exaggerate the contrast in the dark range.įor bump use the same technique, but shift the tones towards the lighter range.
#Combine normal maps with crazy bump software
You can however achieve perfectly acceptable results using image editing software like Photoshop. When creating these textures I personally prefer to use an application such as Shadermap, Pixplant or Crazy Bump, as you can change textures on the fly and preview how they will appear in your rendering application. I'll now go over the process of creating reflection, bump, displacement and normal maps for use with Thea Render and other 3D rendering software packages. ">Part 3 - Reflectance, Bump, Displacement Maps