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has anyone else had bad luck with bump maps [normal maps]?
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Quote
 Re: has anyone else had bad luck with bump maps [normal maps]?
Posted by rainbow_lazer on Tue Jan 31st at 6:19am 2006

i can't for the life of me get bump/normal maps to work.

i've read the several tutorials on how to make them. namely these:

http://www.snarkpit.net/editing.php?page=tutorials&id=186&highlight=normal
http://www.snarkpit.net/editing.php?page=tutorials&id=122&highlight=normal
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Creating_Normal_Maps

they all seem to follow pretty similar processes:

1. make a regular texture

2. use the nvidia plugin for photoshop to create the normal/bump map for the texture

3. save both out as 32bit targa files, appending the 'normal' filename with '_normal': "<texture>.vtf", "<texture>_normal.vtf"

4. compile both with vtex to turn them into vtf's

5. here's where the tutorials become a little unclear: the VDC tut recommends inserting the line:

"nocompress" "1" "normal" "1"

into the <texture>.txt file that vtex creates [along with the tga files], then recompiling the tga's.

one of the snarkpit tut's recommends putting the line:

"normal" 1 "bumpscale" ".025"

into the <texture>.txt file, while the other snarkpit tutorial mentions none of this.

6. most of the tutorials and posts i've seen are pretty consistent as far as the vmt file is concerned. it seems to go something like this:

"LightmappedGeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "filePath/<texture>"
"$bumpmap" "filePath/<texture>_normal"
}

i have seen some mention of using '$normalmap' instead of '$bumpmap'. i don't know if these are interchangeable or not.

7. after you've done this correctly [supposedly smiley ] you should be able to restart hammer, run your map, and then see your bump map show up on the texture.

is there anything i'm missing? perhaps something completely obvious and stupid?

or is there some weird limiting constraint in the filter, or in my sytem or something somewhere that's preventing the bump maps from showing up even though i'm doing it correctly?

any help is greatly appreciated. thanks!



Quote
 Re: has anyone else had bad luck with bump maps [normal maps]?
Posted by wil5on on Tue Jan 31st at 8:50am 2006

I think VTEX isnt copying the .txt into .vmt like it should. Recompile the texture after changing the .txt, and if that doesnt work, put the extra lines in the .vmt file for the texture in the materials folder, rather than the .txt file.


&quot;If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?&quot;
- My yr11 Economics teacher



Quote
 Re: has anyone else had bad luck with bump maps [normal maps]?
Posted by BlisTer on Tue Jan 31st at 4:58pm 2006

i use 1,2,3,4,6,7 for normalmaps.

here's what i would do:

step 1: check options>advanced>hardware directx level. normal maps are only possible from directx 8 graphic cards afaik.

step 2: go ingame and type mat_normalmaps 1 in console. if you see purple-ish textures on the textures your trying to make normalmaps for, the process has worked but the original textures are so monocolor that you dont see the effect (=unlikely)

step 3: in this case the process hasnt worked: check if the filepath's are correct. Another probable cause is that you created a .vmt for the normalmap. you should only create the vmt for the original texture and not make a vmt for the normalmap. in the vmt for the basetexture you should refer to the normalmap as in point 6. normally you do not need to fiddle with .txt files if you name the normalmap ..._normal as mentioned.




These words are my diaries screaming out loud



Quote
 Re: has anyone else had bad luck with bump maps [normal maps]?
Posted by Dark_Kilauea on Fri Feb 3rd at 4:41am 2006

Make sure to run buildcubemaps!

I had the same problem, this seemed to bring them back.


Dark_Kilauea
DVS Administration
http://www.dvstudio-production.com/



Quote
 Re: has anyone else had bad luck with bump maps [normal maps]?
Posted by rainbow_lazer on Fri Feb 3rd at 5:37am 2006

yeah, i ended up re-installing steam and the bump maps work fine now.



Quote
 Re: has anyone else had bad luck with bump maps [normal maps]?
Posted by Tracer Bullet on Fri Feb 3rd at 6:34am 2006

? quoting rainbow_lazer

You do realize that your name is an oxymoron I hope? Sorry. That's all I've got to say.




Some people are like slinkys...

They aren?t really good for anything, but you can't help but laugh when one tumbles down the stairs.



Quote
 Re: has anyone else had bad luck with bump maps [normal maps]?
Posted by wil5on on Fri Feb 3rd at 8:45am 2006

If youre going to be pedantic, you might as well point out that "laser" is spelled with an s. Then again, perhaps this person is aware of something we are not, and a "lazer" is not a laser, and can in fact be rainbow.


&quot;If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?&quot;
- My yr11 Economics teacher



Quote
 Re: has anyone else had bad luck with bump maps [normal maps]?
Posted by Tracer Bullet on Fri Feb 3rd at 9:27pm 2006

? quoting wil5on
If youre going to be pedantic, you might as well point out that "laser" is spelled with an s. Then again, perhaps this person is aware of something we are not, and a "lazer" is not a laser, and can in fact be rainbow.

I'm pedantic about physics, not spelling





Quote
 Re: has anyone else had bad luck with bump maps [normal maps]?
Posted by poisonic on Tue Feb 7th at 12:28am 2006

Use VTFEDIT thats a handy tool to make textures (to convert tga's and other texture files to VTF)


To make the VMT just open the txt and save it as yourtex.vmt in the right DIRECTORY <html><head><link rel="stylesheet" href="themes/standard.css" type="text/css"></head><body topmargin=2 leftmargin=2>




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