Mapping By Texture Extrapolation
WarpZone
Join Date: 2002-11-03 Member: 6264Members
Join Date: 2002-11-03 Member: 6264Members
<div class="IPBDescription">A fancy title for me being bored in WC.</div> Dunno why I never thought of doing this before... I guess it's because NS2.wad's 256x256 wall textures are more complex and ornate than ns.wad's.
Basically, I just make a 256x256 wall brush, then I slice it up along the lines in the texture, and try to make a 3D version of the texture. So far, I like the results. Though lighting could be better. I guess I'll have to work on that next.
Right now, this is just a short section of hallway, but is demonstrates the technique.
Some of these textures look balanced, but when you start trying to cut them up in WC, you realize that most of the details are off-grid. You can tell that they really were hand-painted and scanned, and not drawn in a paint program. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Basically, I just make a 256x256 wall brush, then I slice it up along the lines in the texture, and try to make a 3D version of the texture. So far, I like the results. Though lighting could be better. I guess I'll have to work on that next.
Right now, this is just a short section of hallway, but is demonstrates the technique.
Some of these textures look balanced, but when you start trying to cut them up in WC, you realize that most of the details are off-grid. You can tell that they really were hand-painted and scanned, and not drawn in a paint program. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Comments
gj <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
There is no pump-mapping of any sort. All the brush divisions are perfectly visible in this screenshot. If you immagined some, the credit for that should go to the texturer. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I'll have to give this a go where, at some point in my map, the r_speeds are low enough for me to add this <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
*side note, bump-mapping is to do with texture rendering, not capable with the current HL engine <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
In case ya didn't know HL2 uses bump-mapping <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Normal Maps are, quite literally, an improvement over Bump Mapping like a colour image is to grayscale. While Bump Mapping only stores the height of a given texel, Normal Mapping stores the actual surface normal of that position.
What's the difference, functionally? Normal Mapping can perform far more detailed lighting for the same 'cost' as Bump Mapping, but it doesn't work on older video cards. Bump Mapping can be 'faked' while Normal Mapping can't.
Also, unlike Bump Mapping, normal mapping is easy to automagically compute from a high-res/low-res model pair, instead of needing to be manually drawn or rendered using complicated Z-Buffer tricks like Bump Mapping is.
In fact, a 'normal map' for a video-game level can even be generated automagically, while using standard polygon-reduction on the video-game level itself to make it playable in realtime. Makes modelling a level in 3DS Max or Lightwave or Maya much more feasable.