normal map brightess/contrast

[Ruz]

does this make any difference whatsoever to the output. I am guessing not here

[MoP]

Think about it, if you change the brightness or contrast you're changing the RGB values, and the normals are derived from the RGB values...

[Ruz]

guess I should have thought about that more:)

[Eric Chadwick]

You can do it, works OK but not great. Just make sure to renormalize afterwards or your specular may get screwed.

[malcolm]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't adjusting the contrast of the blue channel make the bump depth deeper?

[MoP]

Yep, that's correct. Gotta be careful though, if you get too dark on the blue channel it can look really odd on the model.

[poopinmymouth]

I have three different Actions for this.

One auto levels each channel independantly, then backs off to 10% using the edit fade command. One does the same thing but only backs off to 20%, and the third backs it off to 30%.

It does indeed alter the normals when you change the RGB, but sometimes you want that, and it makes it read better in game. This works much better on organic stuff, I always leave my mechanical stuff as is, other than fixing errors.

http://www.mr-chompers.com/images/poop.gif (http://www.poopinmymouth.com)