Better way of making Heightmaps and Normal maps for Games?

Oblivion2500 · Aug 2015

I'm primarily a UE4 user. I have been using Bitmap2Material 3 for quite a while. I think its quite a nice replacement for Crazybump which I don't use anymore. My biggest complaint about these normal map / height map creation software is that the heightmap never looks good. The normal map usually looks good from Bitmap2Material 3 and xNormal. What if I wanted to make a height map out of a brick texture that I have, what should I do to make a nice heightmap for it? Photoshop? How?

sltrOlsson · Aug 2015

Knald is my go to software for heightmaps, AO and curvature.

There's a demo version you can try out. https://www.knaldtech.com/

Farfarer · Aug 2015

Knald is my favourite of the available apps, too.

Oblivion2500 · Aug 2015

Well, I don't want to have to buy more software. I don't have much money (I'm a student). How would I produce this results with Photoshop / xNormal?

remotecrab131 · Aug 2015

You just keep trying. Bake a normal map, use eye dropper to take color off the normal map and paint it. Or you don't worry about normal map, make a good highpoly, bake the height map with xNormal or paint it yourself, then generate normal map and curvature map based on that height map. There is no solution other than keep trying and looking for alternative if you don't want to spend anything other than your time.

And tbh, getting a good height map off a single photo image? The result has never been perfect. Unless you took the photo in a specific manner that you can extract the depth information from it easily. And without professional photography equipment and a lighting environment which would cost you 3000 times more than a software, it is impossible to create such photo, not to say for it to work correctly.

Note:
Model the bricks in 3D package in the best detail you can, then bake the height information onto something, like a texture plane. This way you will get a perfect height map if the model of the brick is modelled correctly.

Quack! · Aug 2015

The nice thing about height maps is that they should be only low frequency detail. The forms should be large and easily reproduceable. If you don't have access to something like Substance Designer which is amazing at producing height maps, then hand making them inside of photoshop by identify the major forms is the way to go. Split the image up into the major forms you need and then spend time getting the gradients right. This isn't the best way to do it, but without access to better tools, hand making is one of the ways to do it.

Oblivion2500 · Aug 2015

Quack! wrote: »

The nice thing about height maps is that they should be only low frequency detail. The forms should be large and easily reproduceable. If you don't have access to something like Substance Designer which is amazing at producing height maps, then hand making them inside of photoshop by identify the major forms is the way to go. Split the image up into the major forms you need and then spend time getting the gradients right. This isn't the best way to do it, but without access to better tools, hand making is one of the ways to do it.

I do have Substance Designer 4.5, I should learn it more, I haven't used it for months since I got it. I will check out how to make height maps in Substance Designer.

Farfarer · Aug 2015

Oblivion2500 wrote: »

Well, I don't want to have to buy more software. I don't have much money (I'm a student). How would I produce this results with Photoshop / xNormal?

In that case, XNormal has nothing to do with it. XNormal is about baking from geometry, not generating from diffuse maps.

Just greyscale your diffuse in Photoshop and brighten/darken areas to make your height map.

I wrote this a very long time ago, but might help get the idea over... www.farfarer.com/temp/normalMapMiniTut.jpg

remotecrab131 · Aug 2015

Quack! wrote: »

The nice thing about height maps is that they should be only low frequency detail. The forms should be large and easily reproduceable. If you don't have access to something like Substance Designer which is amazing at producing height maps, then hand making them inside of photoshop by identify the major forms is the way to go. Split the image up into the major forms you need and then spend time getting the gradients right. This isn't the best way to do it, but without access to better tools, hand making is one of the ways to do it.

If you have application that deals with 16 or 32 bit depth image, you can easily add high-frequency detail on a height map.

Quack! · Aug 2015

remotecrab131 wrote: »

If you have application that deals with 16 or 32 bit depth image, you can easily add high-frequency detail on a height map.

It isn't a matter of adding detail to a heightmap. Of course you CAN add that detail to a heightmap, but in gamedev it is very bad practice to add that detail to a heightmap for most things other then terrain.

On non terrain stuff, normal maps are your high frequency detail and heightmaps for parallax mapping are your low frequency.

remotecrab131 · Aug 2015

Quack! wrote: »

It isn't a matter of adding detail to a heightmap. Of course you CAN add that detail to a heightmap, but in gamedev it is very bad practice to add that detail to a heightmap for most things other then terrain.

On non terrain stuff, normal maps are your high frequency detail and heightmaps for parallax mapping are your low frequency.

I'm talking about painting height map and bake them down onto 8 bit as an normal map. Using height map itself in game engine is not a good idea indeed unless for displacement and parallax, or for terrain.

Quack! · Aug 2015

remotecrab131 wrote: »

I'm talking about painting height map and bake them down onto 8 bit as an normal map. Using height map itself in game engine is not a good idea indeed unless for displacement and parallax, or for terrain.

Ok. So that is what I have stated all along. I'm going to excuse myself from this conversation.

Better way of making Heightmaps and Normal maps for Games?

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