3DS Max Quick Normal Map Tutorial

[Minotauro]

Hey phill, I followed the tutorial and my normal turned out kind of flat. Any ideas on what I did wrong ? Thanks.

this is what I got:


from this:

[Campaignjunkie]

http://www.game-artist.net/forums/showp ... stcount=74

Try chamfering the edges so that the normal map can catch some of the depth.

[PhilipK]

Your faces are too much 90 degree around the window. To fake depth in a normal map you will need to simply make the faces "longer" instead of reducing the angle. Try to not get below 45 degrees too much really.
You can't fake too much depth with a normal.

[st0lve]

Normal maps suuuck
But yeah, chamfer the egdes etc.

[Minotauro]

You can't fake too much depth with a normal.

thanks for the info anyways

[Zeta]

Great tutorial! I'll definatly be having a go at this.

[Acumen]

just had my try at this tutorial yesterday and today again and i must say its reallly good
doesnt say things like "and the rest you should be able to find out" but explains it all from start to finish, which is something i really appreciate about tutorials

my go looks like this (no real detail or anything and i doubt it can be used ingame for various reasons but still i went through the process of creating a normal map which was really interesting to see - so thanks a ton for that tutorial):

[st0lve]

Yeah I've seen way to may tuts that doesn't even explain anything at all really, just theory that doesn't make sense.

Nice normal acu

[KIIIA]

Nice tutorial!
But i have another question concerning the rendering:
Is it possible to perfectly fit the render to the size of the plane you project on, so that without croping, scaling etc. in PS you can directly open the perfectly tileable normalmap without black borders (or whatever the color of your background may be)?

[Erratic]

Nice tutorial!
But i have another question concerning the rendering:
Is it possible to perfectly fit the render to the size of the plane you project on, so that without croping, scaling etc. in PS you can directly open the perfectly tileable normalmap without black borders (or whatever the color of your background may be)?

3DS does that automatically if I follow you correctly.

[KIIIA]

Nice tutorial!
But i have another question concerning the rendering:
Is it possible to perfectly fit the render to the size of the plane you project on, so that without croping, scaling etc. in PS you can directly open the perfectly tileable normalmap without black borders (or whatever the color of your background may be)?

3DS does that automatically if I follow you correctly.

Hmm, didn`t explain it right i guess. What i asked was, if there is a button in Max that fits the renderview to the edges of a model that you get something like this:

instead of something with black borders like this:

That would be really handy cause it would save a lot of rescaling in PS.

[PhilipK]

Well you can always snap the lowpoly vertexes or edges to the highpolys outer bounds.
In the case of the second tex there where you have black boarders you would still get those in the corners tho even if the lowpoly is just on the edges of the highpoly of course since they are chamfered. You can then set the ray check color to the plain normal color (127, 127, 255). Just as I said in the tutorial

[ReFlex]

I have a material for Max...

model - material - render - finish


http://www.scriptspot.com/scripts/web_u ... TexMap.zip

[Steppenwolf]

ok i followed this tutorial step by step but it just doesnt render a normal map. it always renders a greyscale (or whatever color the material on my hipoly model has) "bumpmap" tho i have selected NormalsMap as Output element. What have i done wrong? I'm using 3smax 7.

[PhilipK]

ok i followed this tutorial step by step but it just doesnt render a normal map. it always renders a greyscale (or whatever color the material on my hipoly model has) "bumpmap" tho i have selected NormalsMap as Output element. What have i done wrong? I'm using 3smax 7.

Did you actually open the outputted normal map that was rendered?

Don't forget what you see in the render preview window is NOT the normalmap that was rendered The normal map is saved where you set the file to be saved. Like in the picture. Hope you understand what I mean.