ceano Posted February 28, 2016 Share Posted February 28, 2016 (edited) What is the correct settings in Nvidia Tools for CREATING (not saving) a normal map in Photo Shop?, mine never look like the vanilla normal maps and often the in-game texture is way to shiny? Vanilla... http://privat.bahnhof.se/wb220832/TEMP/VanillaNormal.DDS Mine... http://privat.bahnhof.se/wb220832/TEMP/MyNormal.dds (cant link to image direct?, you need to download the images to see them) Edited February 28, 2016 by ceano Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffglobal Posted February 28, 2016 Share Posted February 28, 2016 (edited) http://imgur.com/a/wpokx I hope you started with 3Dc...I think my settings are default actually. Some suggested an unsharpen mask as indicated my one of the pics included, but I've never used it, and have good results. To open the vanilla texture, you have to open with "Open As" before you import and select the nvidia plugin from the drop down list. The same holds true with diffuse textures that have alpha maps. If you don't first, you lose the alpha channel. If you're real problem is after opening _n.dds files, they look like crap, I think somewhere, there's kinda a fix like for specular maps, where you multiply the channels. Though they move the blue channel all the way to 128 but I forgot which way... Either way, if you're making stuff, keep the psd files as the means for saving your work out to dds. DDS files suck like Xerox copying stuff. Each time you copy and save it degrades. I use the partially broken Intel plugin BC7 for the diffuse (without alphas; with alphas DXT5 interpolated alpha) and specular maps and I can save and open the dds files withOUT degradation. Edited February 28, 2016 by jeffglobal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ceano Posted February 28, 2016 Author Share Posted February 28, 2016 Thanks for the answer, i will try all this out and see if i can get it to look like i want :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mm137 Posted February 28, 2016 Share Posted February 28, 2016 Shininess is controlled by specular maps, not normals. Normals control depth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShinraStrife Posted February 29, 2016 Share Posted February 29, 2016 (edited) I just use this really old school program called CrazyBump, then I edit the color curves in the CrazyBump generated maps in gimp to get it perfect. For student or educational uses, I believe the license for CrazyBump is only like 50 USD. And you get a free trial before a license is required, so you could always make a batch to delete the registry keys and just reset the trial that way if your too cheap to buy the educational license. Edited February 29, 2016 by ShinraStrife Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ad3d0 Posted February 29, 2016 Share Posted February 29, 2016 Shininess is controlled by specular maps, not normals. Normals control depth. Looks like not only by them. I've also got glowing texture effect when was experimenting with normal maps... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffglobal Posted February 29, 2016 Share Posted February 29, 2016 (edited) @mm137, @ad3d0 Man, I should have opened the textures... OK. The vanilla normal map is from a HIGH Poly mesh, we can never make a comparable one from the beth assets as is... Always REuse the vanilla normal map and modify that map. What's normally done (hehe) is you paint black on a layer over the original map. Now, it's been so long since I modified normal maps, I forgot which way you emboss the green and red layer. Then you also have to do the 128 blue levels trick. I have to look up in my messages and see what was explained to me so long ago, like 2 months... The other thing I forgot to say, but always do is invert the blue map to green with ctrl i, then save as a 3Dc. I already made a macro with my fingers and they don't always talk to me when I'm thinking. To review, we cannot make normals like Beth did unless they release the high poly meshes. If I stop playing in Maya to make my Kujang the right way after I tortured myself with tutorials today from cmiVFX, and idr, I'll update the thread. Edited February 29, 2016 by jeffglobal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aesfocus Posted March 1, 2016 Share Posted March 1, 2016 (edited) NVIDIA Tools NormalMapFilter makes it easier. Edited March 2, 2016 by aesfocus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mm137 Posted March 1, 2016 Share Posted March 1, 2016 This method is passable for flat things like rugs and walls, but it absolutely will not work for things with more depth, like armor and weapons. These require (at the very least) hand made black and white textures where depth is determined by luminance. This tut is old but still applicable to FO4's engine.http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/textures/how-not-to-make-normal-maps-from-photos-or-images.php Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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