hi, next month the 11.12.09 i will give a talk about our action role playing game "Risen" at "Lichtblick 4d" in Berlin.
Lichtblick 4d is a successful autodesk reseller in germany, that is very active in the german CG community. the event is free, so be sure to check it out. But you have to sign for it on the website!
click here for the event page
hi, i want to introduce 2 blogs from my team mates at piranha bytes.
the first one is from Dietrich Magnus, who is one of our animators.
see his blog here: http://dietrichmagnus.blogspot.com/
its about animation stuff...he grabs cool videos and stuff all about animation related and credits it in his blog.. sometimes he also shows off things of his own. valuable stuff! check this out!
and the second one is very new and not yet layouted.
its from Horst Dworczak our character sculpter.
he mainly shows off thing of his own: http://cgsculptblog.blogspot.com/
quality stuff! check it out!
here another tutorial concerning tileable normalmaps in mudbox
sorry bit long with 20 min. and big with 90 mb..
hope its useful to you.
example files for this tutorial
jo hi students, i just pimped the picture a bit with lights, and put the diffuse also in the bump.
so here is the result. it was a cool lecture with you. nice people you are.
see u next time
and yes, the shadow comes from the wrong side :)..
another day at Games Academy.
this ones also a plane mapped dagger.
you students were very motivated! well done and keep it up!
good compact lecture. was very much too teach in a few hours, but you students were very concentrated.
the result lacks of any complex uv mapping, and also the texture is only the concept bitmap mapped planar onto the knife.
here it is.
if you liked my lecture, recommend me on linked in and xing
 |
| From CG Environments by Sascha Henrichs |
jo, since i got my new wacom, i'm now free to spend all my time with it :)...
this one is a first attempt on sketching a weapon in about ~10 minutes..
and another one.. with sketchbook pro
hi students..here are the presentations of the projects we did the last days..
as always, textures are not worked out.
BS II 2009 FFM did the Scythe:
and BS I 2009 FFM did the Flail
thank you. it was a pleasure to teach you. hope you had fun!
here is a sketch i did with a cool online sketching program call odosketch (wait a second till the sketch starts)
my colleague dietrich magnus found this nifty software! try it out!
heres the pic, since odosketch is somehow down currently
hi my beloved anonymous.
today i bring you some production stuff from our game "Risen"..it came out 2. October '09 ...
its random stuff i have on my disk. there are mainly props and beauty renders..
so here is the first one, its a druids shrine i modeled from a concept that came from a fan contest..
the price was: being in the game...the initial task was to create an undead shrine.. but since there were many good ones, we also had a second place.. this one was then used as a druids shrine.
sculpt in mudbox, render in max.
The next one is a render of some vegetation props..
the grass was the gothic 3 grass..i did a new one for risen.
here is another foliage thang, i also have on my page www.saschahenrichs.de for ages now..
the last one is a concept render, to get an idea how dungeons could work..
cu!
jo today (the last day for art_I_08 unfortunately) we did the wall tile...
also with hard surface mod. in 3dsmax. also had some fun with splines (the wires)
the students were at hardcore lecture mode, until saturday evening!! respect. :)
i hope you all were statisfied with the lecture and see you the next time!
see the effort here (viewport render) :
There was another "schnupperkurs"..(or "taster course" like dict.cc sez) @ the Games Academy..
so greeting to the students, hope your new 3dsmax basic knowledge may help you in future! you were very teachable :D
Mudbox techniques for props #2 - Stone from sascha henrichs on Vimeo.
hi there, here is a second video concerning stone sculpting..
hi, as you perhaps know, we were present at the gamescom exhibition in cologne these days..
and the PC Magazine PC Games made a poll about the best game there..
and due to nearly 1700 participants on this poll, we are the best game there
see it in this article
ok, in my opinion we were definitively NOT the best game...that was Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 ;)
but anyway, a great news for us, that everybody like our game!
so thanks to all people i met there! those were great days and even better parties! :)
[edit]
We are also best game at gamescom @ Gamestar.de
out of amazing 8009 participants
Hi, i stumbled upon 2 papers about normalmaps, and how they work.
the first one is from Nicholas Etheridge and its a PDF, you find it here
the other is from the polycount forum. here it is in the polycount wiki
a first video concerning sculpting techniques for props
Mudbox techniques for props #1 - Wood from sascha henrichs on Vimeo.
jo hi, i think my avantgarde concept, was not, what people expected ;)
currently i got 4 points...see the voting thread here but only participants can vote
it seems the winner will be Ben Bolton who created this masterpiece
yesterday night i finished this little challenge thingy for Game-Artist.net, since i have no time at the weekend, and the deadline is sunday, august 16th.
so the result i posted is somewhat dirty, and made in a rush..perhaps nothing for the portfolio.
not to mention, that the design is really crappy..i could have done muchos better, but didnt ;)
i used mudbox to sculpt the concrete parts, and bumps in the copperbulbs.
then i also used mudbox for the baking of the normal and AO of the unique mapped parts.
the concrete parts are stacked uv chunks to save pixelspace. having a payoff in the seams...
i used the 3dsmax 2010 viewport DX shader with 3 lights
the free " shader FX"takes the opacity part of the fences
1 diffuse
1opacity
1selfillu
1normal
1spec
all 1024x512..
the selfillu and opacity textures could have been optimized with another uv channel and smaller textures, but then it comes to renderproblems inside of max..
and i had no time to find another render solution
GAMC_#1_Aphexx_Diffuse_01.jpg
GAMC_#1_Aphexx_Glow_01.jpg
GAMC_#1_Aphexx_Normal_03.jpg
GAMC_#1_Aphexx_opacity_01.jpg
GAMC_#1_Aphexx_Specular_03.jpg
Triangle Count: 1412 tris
hi, i decided spontaneously :) to take part in the GAMC #1 at www.game-artist.net
goal is to make a "Wall Unit".. from a given concept
here it is
it can be changed a bit..so here is my concept and lowpoly so far:
here some diffuse
hi, i stumbled upon this problem sometimes now:
after installation and starting of Mudbox, the material and lighting presets were not there.
so here is the solution in a thread on area.autodesk.com njmaxaddict found the fix, and it worked for me.
here how it goes:
1. Move the “Materials” and “Lights” directories
From here:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Mudbox\2009-x64\presets
To here:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Mudbox\2009-x64\data\presets\
2. Then delete the Trays directory here:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Mudbox\2009-x64\settings\Trays
jo a bit late but finally a viewport shot of the stone, that was modeled in 3dsmax, then sculpted in mudbox, then mapped in max, then speed painted in mudbox :)
the trick is to go for hard edges otherwise this whole thinge would look too blobby.
currently i have a stone making video tutorial in the making, but its not ready yet.
perhaps the next week you can download it!
the initial diffuse and normal size was 2048, but it also works both reduced to 512!
currently i'm in frankfurt giving a leveldesign lesson at Art_I_08_FFM
so far this lecture contained:
modeling of a low poly landscape mesh. meaning a canyon/cave entrance surrounded by rocks.
and sculpting a rock normalmap in mudbox, as also painting the diffuse map for the rocks in photoshop with the help of phototextures.
for modeling landscapes its useful to spend some minutes in a rough concept in photoshop. use interesting shilouettes and overlapping shapes
then i personally model it with "plane"-modeling in 3dsmax 2010, meaning: extruding edges with the shift+move tool. to achieve organic look and feel, scale random edges after extruding.
use the "blend"-script from the "polymagus action items"-scripts to assign the blend-script to the space-bar..then you will model light-speed-like :).
3dsmax has a new cap tool in the graphite modeling tools that is capable to blend edges, that share one vertex, with only one click on a button. but you still cannot assign this button to a key...so still this blend script is the only valid solution for high speed modeling.
here is the result so far, rendered in mental ray....
for the normalmap, we used mudbox to sculpt the topology on a plane. do not forget to create many topology features on the plane, to be able to map this texure some bigger on the landscapes. then make this map tileable in PS.
after rendering the normalmap, you can also render an ambient occl. map in mudbox. this can be used for a base in photoshop to paint the diffuse. or you use the blue channel of the normal map in photoshop, which mainly acts like a cavity map.
the stone normalmap itself is copied and blended with overlay 2 or even 3 times. i recognized, that it is helpful for rock or stone structures to have a real strong or even overdone normalmap. so i overlayed it 2 times. but do not forget to normalize after the first and second overlay.
or try to overdo it in mudbox, with the sculpt.
here it is with wireframe
that's the normal, you see how it looks overdone. but it works actually better in this way, at least for rocks!
tomorrow we will sculpt a stone, make some 3d grass, and then arrange it in the scene. then render it.
cheers
hi, i just discovered the great drawing application: Alchemy through the neil blevins gallery.
its a drawing programm, that creates very neat fractals and somewhat random shapes.
ideal for creating hip and fast artificial drawings, or it can even be used to integrate in the production pipeline of your art department.
you can find forms and silhouettes very quickly, or you can even go for rough concepts..
here are some terrain shapes created within seconds..
high speed lecturing here in Berlin..
this is the result of the 2nd day of my lecture for the art_i_07 course
a low poly sculpted wall with fence and barbwire..
tomorrow we'll do the rebars
theres also a problem with the razor wire, which is somehow one sided...
art_i_2007 will finish their studies soon.
and this is what we did in the first day of my last lecture there:
hi, here something new, we did in the course.
tired of making swords, i offered to choose between a sword and a gun..
and so the students chose a gun.
this concept was found in the net, and it was from torvenius at deviant art
heres our model. we also have an animation, which i will post later
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(to make youtube videos start instantly and loop them, use this term in the embed code:
http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEOID&loop=1&autoplay=1 where "VIDEOID" is your unique video ID)
---
we had no time for the mapping, so we plane mapped it from the side, to project the concept picture as a texture. the only thing we pelted was the handle.
the model is a bit optimized, but could be even more optimized.
also it has no spec and normalmap on it.
for all students of Games-Academy and other visitors out there
i added a QUALITY LINK section on the right..
so if you seek knowledge, visit the linked sites and do the tutorials!
btw..
for this news i crafted a scene with a "quality chainlink" and rendered it with vray..
if you have vray and you are interested in the materials used in the scene, you can download
the scene HERE! they are complete procedural. vertex colors were used to blend the "weldings"
Creature modeling has just finished.
but i think there are still many regions i should give a clean up for later rigging and animation.
the model has ~ 31k tris at lowres, but is meant for subdivision
i think real char modelers would have modeled it far cleaner and confident so excuse any weirdness inside the wires 
i think the next step should be cleaning up the mesh and then do the detailing in mudbox for the displacement..or perhaps only normal map to save later rendertime?!
another lecture solved at GA...
we had:
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| From CG Environments |
this is the result of another 3dsmax basix lecture at the GA
the course GD_I_2009 chose the riddick saber claws to model.
as always the texturework is really raw.
what you see here are max 2010 viewport snapshots with doylles
viewportshader
this time we tried to create a puddle decal and we were successful.
the workflow was like: sculpting a plane in mudbox (stones,dirt), then baking in 3dsmax to get the normal and the height map, then texture work in photoshop (diffuse,alpha,specular,normal details) and then setting up the direct x shader in 3dsmax viewport. thanx to doylle from www.game-artist.net for the nice 3dsmax directx viewportshader
the trianglecount of the decal is 2
here the screenz
here the wireframe :)
hi did you know this 3d event held in utrecht this month?
if not, then check out http://www.enduserevent.com/
i will be there. here are some of the speakers
Neil Blevins
Allan McKay
Ted Boardman
Zap Andersson
and
Ken Pimentel from Autodesk.
the last mentioned will give an NDA closed session about product plans concerning 3dsmax...this will be amazing..
as also the "making of" held by neil blevins from pixar. he will talk about the making of the garbage towns on the earth from the WALL-E film...this is just AWESOME!
so come and check it out!
very small update for this sweet creep...
the "nose" is now more pressed inside the face, also some proportions are reworked.
the bottom is started and the arms an head connected.
i think the arms went somewhat thin, but i will give those smaller bugs less priority
hi, here is another update, which contains the hand modeling of my creature...
cheers
here the CGTalk WIP thread which is currently not that well visited..
hi actually never wanted to model any creature in my whole lifetime. but currently i'm rendering animations with vray and its just great. so that i want to render a small private project with that cool renderer. that is how my next private project was invented..heres the concept:
the final product should be an animation.
it will be an automatic camera record, like the real life nightshots in forests we know from animal documentaries.
the setting: an expedition has discovered a planet with life potential. and it seems lifeforms are truely existent there.
they are not developed as humans and seem to be shy. they live in caves due to high temperatures on the surface.
anyhow they could be attracted by light.
so the scientists installed sites inside the caves systems, that carry lightsources cameras and energycells to record footage of the unknown species.
a very small story of a few seconds will give this shot some life.
the first posts only carry props, landscape and the creature.
i think this whole project will take not less than 2 or even 3 months cause of my job.
here are the first WIP's
i tried to implement many overlapping shapes into the head, so it gets more interesting
for the chest i really have a hard time doing cool body topology, since i never modeled a creature.
the first try you see in the WIP, titeled "ugliness" there i just tried to model a chest without any references...that was silly.
then i thought the best would be to take references and trace them.
ans since the creature will be real skinny i chose skeleton references from the net.
for this i first traced a shoulderblade and then the rips, after that,
i placed the shoulder blade over the rips and deleted the underlying rips.
afterwards i closed all open topology. then i did the same with the shoulder and breastmuscle.
i believe no charmodeler would ever model this complicated way, but for me characternoob it turns out useful.
here the CGTalk thread
Hi, sometimes you might loose your "Show Desktop" icon in your windows quickbar by extra dark forces.
So it happened to me, and not only one time!!
Now i found this cool tip on the net, on how to restore it.
Create a *.txt file somewhere, open it and place this code inside:
Then rename your txt to this:
[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop
Ok here you see the result of the March "Schnupperkurs" in the Games Academy.
and hows that, this time...its a sword..but a lightsword!
:) the students learned 3dsmax quite fast, and they were pleased as they said.
see it here
jo, this is the result of the february Games Academy class. its from the course Art_I_07
We modeled this bunker..but i tend to name it a pumping station. a bunker would never have such plenty pipe structures outside its covering walls :)
i arranged some of the objects (pipes) we also modeled in this course.
here it is.
and heres the concept
so finally a version, that works somehow.
here is it:
the self-imposed task was to create a prepared workflow to create broken concrete surfaces by the use of procedural textures.
first i painted a concrete texture, to have an initial point to recreate in procedurals.
then i took the mesh and created the procedurals for that.
i took many bercon noises and nested them. first place big noises, then getting smaller.
i made 2 materials, one with concrete and one with broken concrete.
these two i put in a blend material, and used vertex colors to blend them.
for this i used this Warp plugin, from footools, and this tutorial from neil blevins for getting cool fractal blendings out of simple straight vertex colors.
#for setting the vertex colors very fast, i used neils script "cornerEdgeToVertexMap" from his infamous "soulburnscripts!
also install the blurstudio plugins
this whole thing to (hardly) understand and getting working took me now nearly ~12 working days, when i take all the time in line.
get the 2009 max file here
hi, i got a a little update concerning my procedural hobby...
the left material is the procedural representation of the painted concrete on the right of this picture.
currently i only managed to build the diffuse map. the bump will follow.
it came out as a hell of stacked noises with use of berconmaps plugin.
the only problem is, that i still have no technique to blend the "broken concrete" parts at these positions, where they are painted. a vertexcolor mix would soften up the edges too much.
now i plan to assign the "broken"-concrete map, to the "broken"-polys, and the "intact"-concrete to the intact-polys and search for a transition shader
if you are interested in the shader, you can grab it here
its 3dsmax 2009 version.
here you can see the shadertree
hi, ever played mirrors edge? did you like it?
if so, i have a very ambitious project for you, that i found by strolling through the wiki entry of mirrors edge.
it's the mirros edge 2d browser game.
very cool. a bit tricky to play, but the learning curve is similar to the full 3d game.
see it here http://www.bornegames.com/mirrors-edge-beta/
and this guy made this game
hi. currently i'm learning 3dsmax procedural 3d maps.
since now, i always painted my texture maps. as it is usually used in the game development.
but in the movies it is everyday buisness to use parametrical setups and rigs to achieve a higher production speed and keeping the work modifiable at the loss of quality. since not all props must work in close up there. so it MUST also be usable for us gamers in some way.
i want to compare the workflow of movie 3d artists to my (gameart, so mainly paint textures) workflow.
i just made some tests, and the bake leads to absolutely NO seams. which is pretty amazing. so i think, if i produce some base 3d maps, which i can use over and over, i will save much time in the end, even if i paint them over in the end.
anyway currently its just an experiment, and its inpired by a friend who works for the movie industry. but i will push it further, since the first attemps are promising.
in the first place, i want to create concrete blocks with rebars sticking out of it, since i could use these props in a gaming environment for a friend of mine.
i tried some procedurals on the rebars, that should stick out of the concrete.
the speculars are not really cool and perhaps i should let the grey parts be convex in their orientation, so that they look like concrete, that still sticks on the rebar. but that is easy once you have it set up.
left to right:
1. highpoly, 2 shapeless only shader 3. baked on lowpoly with normalmaps
the baked maps are ~1024x256
this last pic, is another shape of a rebar. one that is more commonly known as a rebar.
and here are some pics of a currently painted concrete block that i also want to create with procedurals
here are some related threads, that i started:
@ CG Talk
and
@ Game-Artist.net
and here is the max 2009 scene, with a part of the rebar and the material on it.
here is my promised desert dunes video tutorial
have fun, and excuse my bad english
click here for the online version
click here to download
just in this moment, the lecture at Games academy in Frankfurt finished.
here is the finished work..and how's that...it's a sword!... :)
it was a concept from www.andreas.blicher.info
here is the pic
unfortunately he has no email on his site, for that we could contact him..
as always, just raw texture work.
in the meantime, i have some candy for you..
found this some time ago, and its worth to spread around!
this is from Donnie Hoyle, and he worked out a couple of photoshop tutorials in a very weird way.
there are many more of the tutorials in his channel, and they are very very funny :)
hi, i just promised tutorials some time ago. but we have a couple of milestones to deliver a piranha bytes, so there was no time at all, to do them.
i made an attempt to record a video tutorial on the "making of dunes"-topic and everything went fine but the image quality of the captured data...so i have to re-record it..
anyway, currently i'm in frankfurt at the games academy, teaching the GD_II_08_FFM course in basic modeling.
greetings to the new students
so long
just for info.
do not try to get it working..its useless.
wow, now we have GPU using to be disabled, when using xp64, no "use adobe dialog" when saving and the useful nvidia plugin also do not work with cs4 64bit... its amazing
seems the usability of cs4 have increased only in parts that are hidden to me....
this is an old one, but i cant leave my hands off it..
so thats a forest path, that i once modeled by (from?) a photo reference.
i pimped it a bit for the rederosity forums.
So, the december class Art_I_07 is through.
heres what we did:
need to save into favorites folders in photoshop CS2 and CS3?
no more favorites in the photoshop save dialog?
don't know what i'm talking about?
ok, time for you, to see this cool tutorial!!
(note: this not works for CS4)
To exchange a location to the left-hand side of the Open and Save dialog boxes use the group policy editor:i just translated them from german to english and put them on sheets. typos included :)
here are two older tutorials from my website that i will also offer in this blog:
how to model an ancient column:
and how to map an ancient column :)
see it on the area.autodesk.com
The Beautifulchallenge on cgarena has ended, and i was able to finish my piece.
So here it is.
I just updated my 2 columns "rounders" blog template with this 3 columns template.
if you also want to do this to your blog, then go here:
http://designs.bloggerbuster.com/
So here is the promised Battle Axe, which we modeled in a basic modeling class at the Games Academy.
It was the course GD_II_08.
The students were quite fast in understanding 3dsmax.
As always Textures are not perfect.
Hello, i just wrote a small review on the 3d features of Photoshop CS4 for CGTalk.
I also publish it here.
-------------------------------------------
...i just finished a new basic modeling class with course GD_II_08. and we modeled 2 blade war axe.
the presentation render will follow in a few days.
also i wanted to record some video tutorials on low polymodeling, mapping and texture creation for games. but this will take some days.
So the axe texture is still not ready, but meanwhile i'll post a stone, that was done lecturing an art class at GA Berlin.
This stone has 136 tris, and was done using 3dsmax,Mudbox,Bodypaint and Photoshop.
The beautyrender was only done with normal lights and photoshopping. :)
Here the wireframe. This stone only has a Diffuse, that is also functioning as specular color and intensity, and a normalmap.
So it will work very well in a realtime environment.
I also want to do a video tutorial about modeling stones.
Look at that 360° viewer. Be aware its ~9 MB
(click and drag the image)
here is the next update concerning the "beautiful"-challenge.
i played around with afterburn, and that is, what came out so far..
[upd]
so here is even a newer
[upd]
change lighting a bit and some fog..but the purple light is not so cool
[upd]
a first composit in photoshop
[upd]
i switched to another technique.
now i modeled the nebula, rendering it with different shadings,
that work as masks, and then composited it.
This was an exam scene i prepared for "Media-Design Hochschule". It was done for a lighting lecture of a gamedesign course.
The task was to set up a light rig (light rig = all lights that are used to light a scene) without advanced lighting solutions like radiosity or global illumination (bounced light) . Just fake GI by using spots and selective lighting, since the possibilities in game engines are mostly limited.
I wanted to teach the students how to use standart lights and teach them to get a feel how lights behave....think like a light :)
so i modeled this harbour scene and set up a light rig as an example and let the students do their own light rig in a test.
I used many different lights in the scene that all serve in different ways.
So these functions of lights are mostly the same for every scene you will ever light.
Download the german paper of this class
Key lights: are the most bright lights in a scene. They define the dominant angles for shadows and illuminations.
Bounce Lights: They act as the reflection of any lightsource inside the scene. usually, they consist of wide spotlights, with very small brightness and a desaturated color, of the surface from what it is reflecting of.
You want to use selective lighting. A selective light only includes selected objects within its illumination. Every 3d application is able to do this.
Advanced lighting techniques, like "Global Illumination" in Mental Ray, can compute the reflections of the lightrays, so that you do not have to create extra light sources, to fake the "GI"(global illumination)
Fill Lights: illuminate the other direction of the key light, they help lighting the "not lit by keylight"-surfaces. It is also reduced in intensitiy/brightness and you can try the complementary color of the keylight for your fill light. Or blue or grey for outdoorscenes. Softer not so dark shadows.
Rim Lights: define the outer shape of an object or a scene. Use a very bright light, perhaps cold colors and a light shadow
Final Image. To get a good feedback, of what your lights are doing, also always render them alone. Only then you can estimate the lighting effect.
When you render with all lights turned on you can see how the lights harmonize.
Here is the 3dsmax 2009 file of the cube with lights
------------------------------------------
And here the harbour scene in development.
Here the first lighting attempt after modeling. Lightsources, that you can physically see in a scene are so called: Practical Lights. As you see there are plenty of them. In this first attempt i created not only the keylights, but also their bounce lights and rims on the railing. And also some local fill lights. but the scene totally lacks of an ambient fill, which should represent the color of the sky in this case.
Here you see the ambient fill, which is blueish. The modeling was also somewhat cheesy, so i changed it.
Here we see another change in geometry, and the adding of volume fogs to the practical key lights.And last but not least, a whole scene fog, just to add some harbour feeling. But that was photoshopping, because i was too tired ;)
If you want to see the rig, you can download the scene here.
(use right click "save as")
Download the german paper of this class
I hope this was interesting. cu l8er
Here is some work, i did in lectures i gave at the games academy.
currently i participate at a challenge at www.cgarena.com..
i try to achieve a cool space nebula, but i think i will fail the task of creating the nebula with pflow an afterburn....
here is the last picture... and the one before the last... i guess it is no change for the better....
This is a Normalmap tutorial, i also published on my site. Perhaps it makes sense publishing it on the blog also.
Software: Photoshop, Nvidia Plug (Nvidia.com -> Developerzone - Photoshop Plugin)
Goal: Creation of a normalmap through a diffuse texture
Creation of normalmaps in Photoshop is not done by simply using the Nvidiaplugin only one time on a diffuse texture, but by applying the filter a couple of times at different blurring levels of the diffuse map.
Starting with the fine detail structures, you copy the source texture and blur it, to transform hard contrasts to gradients, to extract the more and more larger details.
The Nvidia plug wont convert hard contrasts without gradients to „deep“-structures.
The more you blur your ressource texture, the higher you set the „scale“-value in the Nvidiaplug
So lets start:
This is our ressource texture
fig1
fig2 (the y normal was inverted, because our game engine at Piranha-Bytes needs this, don't do this at home)
fig3
fig4
Workflow Part 1:
- duplicate your diffuse textur one time with „create new document from history" in history. (fig1)
- apply the nividia filter to one of the copys for getting a detail structure normalmap. Setting: Scale=4, Alternate Conversion=Max(RGB) (fig2) (the y normal was inverted, because our game engine needs this)
- put the normalmap aside for later compositing. (Tex1)
- get the other copy and desaturate (strg+shift+u)
- apply Gaussian Blur Filter with small Radius (2-3 pix) (fig3)
- duplicate your diffuse textur one time with „create new document from history" in history.
- apply the nividia filter, set „Scale " to 15
- put the normalmap also aside for later compositing. (Tex2)
- get the other copy
- apply Gaussian Blur Filter with higher radius (4-5pix)
- duplicate this document one time with „create new document from history" in history.
- apply the nividia filter, set „Scale " to 25
- apply Gaussian Blur Filter with small Radius (1-1,5 pix) to your normalmap in order to reduce moiré-effects, that came by using the gaussian-blur with high radius. (fig4)
- put the normalmap also aside for later compositing. (Tex3)
- get the other grey texture copy
- apply Gaussian Blur Filter with higher radius (6-7)
- apply the nividia filter, set „Scale " to 30-35
- apply Gaussian Blur Filter with small Radius (1-1,5 pix) to your normalmap in order to reduce moiré-effects, that came by using the gaussian-blur with high radius. (fig4)
- This normalmap is our base for the final normalmap. It defines the largest structures. (Tex4)
We are now going to compose the 4 different normalmap levels together by using the „overlay“-blending. One after another over the base-normalmap.
But after every single „overlay“-blending, you have to apply the nvidia filter once again in the „alternate-conversion“ setting: „normalize only“ in order to reduce wrong normalmap colors, that appear after every „overlay“-blending.
fig5
fig6
Workflow Part 2:
- Copy all content out of [Tex3] (ctrl+a, ctrl+c) as a layer into [Tex4] (ctrl+v)
- use blendingmode „Overlay" or „Soft light" (for less hard blending) on the new layer (fig5)
- flatten image to background layer
- use nvidiafilter with „Alternate Conversion"-Mode: „Normalize only" (fig6)
- Copy all content out of [Tex2] (ctrl+a, ctrl+c) as a layer into [Tex4] (ctrl+v)
- use blendingmode „Overlay" or „Soft light" (for less hard blending) on the new layer (fig5)
- flatten image to background layer
- use nvidiafilter with „Alternate Conversion"-Mode: „Normalize only" (fig6)
- Copy all content out of [Tex1] as a layer into [Tex4]
- use blendingmode „Overlay" or „Soft light" (for less hard blending) on the new layer
- flatten image to background layer
- use nvidiafilter with „Alternate Conversion"-Mode: „Normalize only"
If the Texture should be tilable, you now have to inspect your seams. And perhaps correct them.
Use the „offset“-filter in order to do this. Put exactly the half of your pixelsize of your document into the fields „horizontal pixels“ and „vertical pixels“.
Then use the blur tool or copy stamp tool, to reduce your seams..after this use the offset filter again. And then also use the nvidia plug again in „normalize only“-mode to for color corretion.
Now your normalmap is final.“
I hope this was helpful to you! :) cya
sascha
hello, my name is sascha henrichs,
i'm a 3d environment artist in the games industry since 1998 and this is my first posting in my cg environments blog.
in this blog i want to show some of my private and released commercial work, but also show some of my workflows to use in my lectures at the Games-Academy.
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