Narmal map export with Atlas?

[metalliandy]

Hey Aaron,

Are Normal maps exported and/or baked into the texture of the Atlas file?

If not would this be hard to do?

If so...does anyone have a work around?

[Aaron]

Hi Metalliandy,

The normals map is not exported with the Atlas plugin. I doubt it would be very hard to modify the plugin accordingly, but the trick will be finding someone to do it.

I'm not quite sure how you could bake normals onto the texture map. To be sure, the normals are used to make the light map, and the light map is baked onto the texture map. However, to directly bake the normals onto the texture...wouldn't that make it all pinky-looking, or am I missing the point here?

Cheerio,
Aaron.

[metalliandy]

Hey Aaron,

Thanks for looking.

I apologise for the confusion, my wording was poor. :S

By baking i meant that the normal map would be exported in the Atlas file itself and automatically used by TGEA but not, as you pointed out, baked in to the colour texture.

So i guess baked into the Atlas file would be more appropriate wording...

Make any more sense?

I would actually prefer to use your Atlas plugin and not the GG one because they are not the fastest around when it comes to releases etc.

Would it make it any easier if you were to modify the code to L3DTio_Atlas2?

[Aaron]

Hi Metalliandy,

We can probably add the normal maps as another layer in the Atlas file without any serious problems, but as for them being used "automatically by TGEA", I don't know. Engine modifications may be required to use normal maps in Atlas (dynamic lighting, etc.) Do any Atlas gurus have any thoughts on the subject?

Anyway, I'll wait for Mark to finish his fixes for the L3DTio_Atlas2 plugin, then I'll look at adding the normal map export option.

Cheers,
Aaron.

[metalliandy]

Hey Aaron,
Thanks for the reply

After some searching i found various threads on normal mapping Atlas unfortunately they are on the TGEA private forum and i cannot post any code here .

Here are the links
http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=35486
http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=33764
http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=38460

Hope that helps a little or at least points you in the right direction

[Aaron]

Hi Metalliandy,

From my reading of those posts, the normals map wasn't a large high-res unique map, but rather a smaller normal map that was tiled in much the same way as a detail map (but with a fancier shader). In that case, I'm not really sure it's necessary to pack the normals into the atlas file, since the normals map would only be ~512x512 pixels. I think you might do better to load the normal map as a separate JPEG/PNG.

Also, my it's my understanding that you need to make engine changes and/or write custom shaders to make use of dynamic bump-mapping in TGEA. Have you got this going?

Cheers,
Aaron.

[metalliandy]

Hey Aaron,
Sorry for the late reply...
Yes you do have to write a shader for dynamic bump maps.

There is a cool shader pack written by the folks at noolness.com
It contains Normal/parallax and relief shader's for use in TGEA.

Clickie

My understanding is that, In theory, if you incorporated the height map info into the Alpha of the Atlas texture you could use relief or parallax maps too.


If for some reason the pack becomes unavailable email me and i will send it to you


Does that info help any?

*edit*

I think that using detail maps is a poor substitute for a high res. image as they are too generic and do not represent the true detail of the actual texture used on the terrain and would love to be able to use a high res. normal/relief or parallax map, though the processing required would be greater. :S

My hope is that when my game is released, the average users hardware will be up to the task.

[Aaron]

Hello,

On the subect of bumpmapping atlas terrain, I thought I might point-out this resource by Ves:

http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=13582

(scroll down for pretty pictures)

This work uses mask maps to blend between up to four texture/bumpmap pairs.

Cheers,
Aaron.

[metalliandy]

Nice Find Aaron!

That looks sweet and should be simple for me to test it out

Any chance of incorporating this resource into the plug-in?

And i made a mistake in my previous post, Normal maps are incorporated by default into TGEA.
All you have to do is point the normal texture to the model as you would a colour texture, and then define the spec and bump amounts .