.:Making Your Own Texures.:. Bit of Help

[mitchell]

ive been following the tutorial at:
http://hpl2.frictionalgames.com/tutorial...tutorial_1

and ive got my texture as a dds file but i need to do “NMap” and “Specular" aswell,
is that just a simple checkbox i need to do in my photoeditor in order to make them 2 things?
so do i overall need to have 3 texture files as dds to make 1 texture?
thanks

[Neurological]

You don't need all the filters like NMap or Specular, you can have only the diffuse if you want, but the other filter are needed to add details.

NMap is the Normal Map, which it gives depth on the texture depending on the light direction. The specular map is needed to tell the engine which parts reflect light and which parts reflect less light.

With only the Diffuse the texture ingame will looks flat.

[enk]

I didn't know what exactly normal maps they were before now, thanks neuro =)

I found you can make Nmaps with GIMP and the normal map plugin.
http://code.google.com/p/gimp-normalmap/
tutorial
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/...n_The_GIMP

I just made some. The wall and floor is models I made with blender, and I made the textures with gimp. for the wall I drew the bricks and shaded them, and then grabbed a free concrete/asphalt texture from the net and bump mapped it 'through' my bricks



The wall looks a bit squirmy, I think I made the scale too high = /

[Neurological]

The wall need some work, but the floor looks cool. Btw you may be interested in the different techniques to create normal maps.

One way is to use black and white textures and make a normal from it. Basicly the normal map plugin take the light and dark colors to make a normal map. The dark zones are the deep parts the brighter zones are the higher parts.

For rocks and such textures, the plugin is good enough, but if you want to make something different like floor tiles of a mansion you have to use a different technique.

I'll make an example with a texture of mine. I started with s imple marble pic and after some photoshop work I got this:



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Now the problem was to make the tiles not flat, but taking a normal map directly from the pic would have messed up the whole normal map, so I created a layout of the tiles first in black and white:



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So why this? Basicly I take a normal map from this black and white layout, the black part are the deep part, the white are the higher. Then I turned the default marble texture into black and white and took a normal map from it too, to get the cracks of the marble details, to finish I did put the tiles layout normal map on the marble one and overlayed it. Thats the result:



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As you can see with this method I can keep the details of the marble but having also the relief on the tiles without messing the normal map.

There is another method which is more advanced as is used to make very detailed stuff, is called baked normal I think is possible to do also in blender. Basicly the mthod is about creating irst a hi-poly model, and project the details into another model, that can be a plane or another model, sadly i don't use blender so i can't help you on this but I think there are good tutorials around to look for.

[mitchell]

THANKS allot, ive got allot better understanding of how it works now thanks 2 you guys

so did you not bother with the Specular image in your both cases Neurological and enk? what does it look like?

OK : ) i have made thease:



i made the middle file by saving it below:




but in the editor theres nothin?




dunno what ive missed? it shows up in the material editor doesnt it?
im sure i need to apply it to a model do i?

any help will be a godsend

[Neurological]

Yes i did also the specular, in your case for the grass you don't need a specular I think, it would make it looks weird.

Btw the material won't show up in the static objects if there isn't a model using that texture. But if you need just to make a floor with that texture you don't need a model, you can use the primitives.

On the right in the map editor there is the Primitiv buttn, thats allow you to draw a plane in your map where you can add a material. Draw the plane, then select it and on the right change properties.

[mitchell]

thats exactly what i needed! Thanks allot!!!!!

is there a easy way to add it to a object so i can make it appear in my list instead of making it that way all the time.
all the walls, signs, floor witch are all essentialy flat

either way i can finnaly start making my map thanks allot

[Neurological]

The only way to make everything appear under static objects is to make models even if they are flat models.