[Retex] Making a Normal Map?

[D3humaniz3d]

I'm rather new to this whole stuff

 

I'm kinda working on the orcish weapons (because there isn't any good hd retex for them on nexus :( ) but i want to generate my own normal maps.

 

http://imgur.com/a/z46hF

 

I used Filter > Alien Mask and played with the settings until it kina resembled aMidianBorn's normal maps

 

Can someone tell me how to make them properly?

 

Cheers, D3

[LeVosgien]

weapons, armor, clothing and generally speaking any assets that are smaller ingame than your standard skyrim character are made by baking a high poly ( or 3d scupt) over a UV mapped low poly model (the "final", ingame version), rather than this... experimentation of yours,that you're apparently trying to do in your 2 software ;)

I suggest perusing youtube for tutorials about 3D modeling/texturing, to get you started on the right track.

[VanKrill]

There is a free 3d modeling piece of software called milkshake, which has Skyrim NIF file import and export modules which can be downloaded from here on Nexus.

 

There is a bit of a learning curve in using any 3d modeling package.

 

You need to understand what a Normal file is...

 

Imagine a small 1 inch square of paper sitting on a desk. Now, mark the exact center of the paper, by drawing lines from corner to corner, forming an X. Next, in your minds eye, place a tooth pick on the center mark, pointing straight up from the paper, such that the angle from the plane of the paper to the tooth pick in 90 degrees, no matter which rotational angle you measure it from.

 

By definition, a "Normal" to a surface is the pointer going in the direction that is 90 degrees from the surface plane

 

The tooth pick points in the direction of the surface Normal. Now, lay a whole bunch of different colored squares with their normal toothpicks in rows and columns all around the first. Tape the squares together to form a patchwork blanket. Each square is a pixel of the texture file.

 

Now, pick the blanket up, and drape it over a large beach ball. The tooth picks will now point outward from the surface of the ball, like the quills on a sea urchin, or a porcupine. Because you've "Mapped" the Texture fill onto the curved surface of the Beach Ball.

 

When the 3d render engine of the game and your graphics card calculates what is seen in view plane of the screen, it uses the "normals" to calculate how light would come from the light source to the game's view plane.

 

So, a Normal pointer is calculated for each pixel, based on the small triangle surface facets of the 3d mesh file. You cannot create a Normal file, without both the texture file, to know where each pixel lies, and the Mesh file, to know the plane of the mesh at the point of the pixel. It is a list of mathematical descriptions of a bunch pointers normal to the surface, one for each pixel in the texture file, defined by the angle of the mesh facets at the location of each pixel.

 

Hence, a Normal File, can ONLY be created inside 3d modeling software that has both mesh and texture defined.

 

You don't manually calculate all those little tooth pick pointers, you just press a button on the 3d software package, to start the macro which generates the Normal file, now that you're done modifying the Mesh and the Texture.

 

So, generation of a Normal File is a final processing step in creating a 3d model in a program like Milkshake.

 

You can open a Normal Pointer file in a 2d texture image editing software, but your not really seeing the normal file for what it is, you're just seeing the image software trying to display the points as colored pixels. You're seeing mathematical descriptions of toothpick like pointers mapped into a 2d panel of colored pixels. Using a Texture file editor to manipulate a Normal file will generally create a completely corrupted Normal File.

 

 

I hope that description helps.

Edited May 17, 2017 by VanKrill

[D3humaniz3d]

Thank you very much for the replies! Gonna play around with the 3d software then.

[KnightRangersGuild]

Are you using gimp? I can tell you how if you're using Gimp although im sure it's similar with most.

[FrankFamily]

Ideally yes, you'd bake the normal map (make in a 3d program from a dense and detailed model). But here you are retexturing an existing asset, just use bethesda's normal map (which is baked properly from the original highpoly model you'd have to unnecesary redo) as a base and overlay your new details on top. It's what most weapon/armor retexturers do and it's what is efficient for this situation. Rebaking those assets would be so much work you might as well redo the whole model.

 

There's a lot of information on the matter here: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_map, both concerning the 3D workflow (baking) and the 2D one which is the way you want to go.

 

Grab nvidia's photoshop plugin* which has a normal generator, or crazybump or knald or whatever other software that makes normal maps from images. And generate a normal map for your details, like the damascus steel pattern you have there. These programs use the grayscale image as a height map, black is down, white up, greys in the middle. And keep in mind you need slopes everywhere. A transition from black to white in one pixel is not going to generate anything useful.

 

Then you have to overlay the detail normal map onto the original (possibly upscaled if you want to add high res details, note upscaling itself does not improve quality, nor does upscale-sharpen, actually, don't run sharpen filters on normal maps). Straightforward overlay blendmode will ruin the normal map, you need to kill the blue channel of the detail normal map that is being overlaid. To do that use the advanced blending options: https://conceptualvisionstudio.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/layers_03.jpg (to simply don't overlay that channel) or just fill the blue channel with 50% grey (neutral value in overlay). Once overlaid and flattened you should renormalize the normap map (option in nvidia normal map filter)

 

* If you have gimp there must be a plugin for it, I just don't know which because i don't use gimp.