Discussion thread for Normal map creation. If you would like to add a comment, click the Post Reply button.
Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.
By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.
This is not Normal Mapping, this is Bump Mapping. Normal mapping is a map that manipulates the surface normals of polygons, not just the pixel shading as with bump maps. FSX does not have a normal mapping feature as far as i know...
"For reasons of their own, ACES chose to use the term "Bump Map" instead of "Normal Map."
Strictly in regards to FSX's lexicon, "normal map" and "bump map" are synonyms."
Normal maps are NOT the same as bump maps. See the wiki entry for referances: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping
It's a nice introduction to what normal mapping is.
"ACES are the ones who chose to misuse the term. ACES chose to call their implementation of "normal map" a "bump map.""
I really don't understand. Does FSX support normal maps? I've never seen any signs of normal mapping in FSX. Bump mapping, it does support though.
1 NOTE:
For FSX the RGB Channels must be as follows:
Red Channel = black
Green Channel = bump map
Blue Channel = white
ALTERNATE METHOD:
An alternative which may also be used is:
- Create your normal map with the n_Vidia plugin.
- Save as .psd file
- Run Imagetool from the command line with the switches as explained in the SDK for normal maps. This will do all the copy-invert-delete-mutilate operations needed (I made a .bat file to automate the process).
ACES has written thier Shader to utilize this rearrangement of the normal map, which allows us to use DDS/DXT5 compression.
If FSX does not utilize normal shading, on the other hand, this workflow would be of no point, just a lot more work...
1. Open Photoshop's "Channel" tab
2. Create an Alpha Channel
3. Set the forground color to pure white
4. Set the background color to pure black
5. Select the Red Channel, press Ctrl-A, Ctrl-X to remove the contents of the Red channel and replace it with pure black
6. Select the Alpha channel, press Ctrl-V to paste the buffer contents
7. Select the Blue channel, select a LARGE pencil, and paint pure white.
Thank you sir! One correction, you may have intended ctrl a, ...etc, not shift a.