Hi all, Im new here. Heard this was a good place for all game dev needs :) anyway i have a question for bump mapping a character in 3ds max, how do i get a bump map template for my model? i got the texture set template using textporter. i exported the texture set in photoshop and painted it. but how would i get the set for bump mapping? do i convert the normal map template to a grey scale or something? kind of a newbie when it comes to skinning :D. thanks for the time.

Depends what you're doing.

On hipoly models, bumpmaps are painted in PS too like the skin, and can use the same UVmap for that.

For lowpoly game models it depends of what you need and have. If you have a hipoly version you'd bake the bumpmap (or heightemap) and additionally paint in some details that are not in the hipoly model... unless you can use normalmaps, then you would bake those and have only painted details in the bumpmap, again, using the same UV ...not that you couldn't use a diff UVmap tho. It really depends of what you're doing.

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Original post by StrangeFate Depends what you're doing. On hipoly models, bumpmaps are painted in PS too like the skin, and can use the same UVmap for that. For lowpoly game models it depends of what you need and have. If you have a hipoly version you'd bake the bumpmap (or heightemap) and additionally paint in some details that are not in the hipoly model... unless you can use normalmaps, then you would bake those and have only painted details in the bumpmap, again, using the same UV ...not that you couldn't use a diff UVmap tho. It really depends of what you're doing.

If you are 'texture baking' a low poly character does that mean it just has a bump map to make the texture look more realistic? I don't understand about this. I looked up some info on texture baking, but found nothing clear for me. Do you know a good tutorial on 'texture baking' a character? Thank you so much,

There was a tutorial around for normalmaps but can't find it anymore, was in a forum... Maybe someone knows of one ?

You can bake low poly models in a few ways. It always gets baked to the given UVmap and it's always called baking :)
-You can bake some lighting into a lowpoly character to help with skinning (having a clear lightsource, underlights etc)
-You can bake shadows and lights to fake casted shadows on static objects or entire level areas to make them more realistic and help out the ingame lighting/shadow casting, you can either bake them on top of the existing skin or paint on top of them after the bake. Most conventional games use this, UT2k3/2k4, HL2 etc to help out the level lighting. Even tho the baked shadows on some objects often don't match the direction of the light ingame in some levels, it still looks more realistic. This wouldn't really work for characters tho, you dont want them to run around with static shadows :)

-If you have a hipoly version of your lowpoly model you can bake the normalmaps, which only makes sense if the engine supports them. Doom3 is atm the only fully normalmapped game afaik (that has been released so far). Some other games use normalmaps to some extent too but you hardly can see them usually.
Normalmaps are a sort of bumpmap, but while bumpmaps only contain height information (up/down), normalmaps store direction too, which makes the faking of geometry more realistic as it reacts properly to the lighting. It's great for characters and map models alike, there just aren't much engines out there yet that support normalmaps.
Doom3 also uses standard painted bumpmaps (heightmaps) combined with the normalmaps for smaller details on characters not worth modeling on the hipoly models like scratches, skin pores (not that you ever see them ingame) etc.
Other than that, standard bumpmaps are pretty much useless nowadays having normalmaps.

There should be more tutorials out there, try looking for 'normalmaps' that's the keyword.

If you go to the NVidia site there's a Photoshop plugin to create normalmaps from 2d images, the results are not half as good as generating the maps from a hipoly model but it should give you an idea of what's going on, it has a simple 3d preview that shows the results in PS.

Thanks :P

halo 2 uses bump maps. saw it on thier website on the renders section.

Halo2, like FarCry, battlefield Vietnam, HL2 etc uses normalmaps for the more important things in the game (characters, vehicles, important static meshes), not for the whole game. That's why Doom3 is still the first fully normalmapped game that uses them consistently for everything.

Halo2 is a good example to compair Photoshop made normalmaps versus hipoly baked normalmaps like Doom3 has. While pretty much everything you can do with the PS plugin is fake some bevelled lines and holes (like the Warthog and chief have all over), generating the normalmaps from hipoly models lets you fake complex geometry (everything in doom3).