Hi all, Once i've textured the first shader (texture map, track-main.dds) for road surface, now I'm adding realroad and reflections. Taking a look at Joesville example, I see asphalt mult.dds, track_main_norm.dds, racegroove.dds, asphalt spec.dds and marbles.dds. For marbles, racegroove and base texture map everything is ok, but I have no idea how to create specular map, diffuse map T2, diffuse map T3 and bump map. Someone can please point me to a good tutorial about this, or give me some suggestions? I've already done some basic editing with photoshop, but I'm very new to shaders and so on. Thanks all.
Hi, If you're using the standard ISI way, the normal map (bump) is created using the NormalMapFilter (nVidia photoshop plugin) applied to the main track texture. I suggest you to create the normal just using details, like crackles and grainy stuff on the tarmac. Don't put too many micro details on the main texture as it is low res and it's used just to create macro details. The tarmac grain will be created by the detail map. You can use some temporary grain layers to get a proper normal map, without putting the same noise in the main road texture. Just experiment to find your style. For both specular and detail map you can use the same picture with different elaborations; - First of all you need some high resolution asphalt picture to extract your patch. Avoid an asphalt with too many variations and/or too much different grains. So, just try to find something looks regular and clean much as possible. - Extract an area (crop) to cover around 0.5 to 1mt square of tarmac (you can experiment a bit on this aspect, as you like). Remember you need a square picture of 1024x1024, so try to get this crop without resize up (enlargement). This way you get a picture with a good quality and sharpness, without the blur caused by the resize. - Now you've to work on this square area to create a seamless texture; a picture you can tile without getting too much patterns or repetitions. If you don't know how to create a seamless texture just google for a good tutorial and find your way. There are tons out there. - Now you get your base picture and you can create both specular and detail multi map. For the detail map you can just use the picture as it is, trying to get a good compromise between contrast and compression, colors and artifacts. Try to get a good balanced picture without exceeding in any aspect. Remember.. more details you have in your picture more the risk to create patterns and repetitions on your track. This picture is used to generate the grain details above your road and needs a lot of tiling as you've to cover a large area (tipically 12 to 16 meter wide) with a small picture (0.5/1mt). This is why it's important to get a clean, and linear, texture. For the Specular map you can work on the same picture changing the Level output. You can add an adjustment layer to change levels without lose your original image. Usually you can get a basic Spec map just working on the central value, using something around 2 and 3...but of course depends on the main picture you're working on.. Basically you need a more bright picture without loose your details and contrast. Just use ISI stuff as a reference to find proper levels. If you have colors in your main picture I suggest you to desaturate the spec map to obtain a grayscale tone. Dunno if you know this picture I made some time ago, but maybe can help you a bit. These are all the main stages used by the road shader with proper channel indications; Hope this helps.
Thanks. First I got it basically working by copy/paste of joesville example. Now your explanation clarified me lots of things. Still missing good reflections and having a too dark wet asphalt, but some fun with photoshop will solve it. The bad thing is just that in dev mode it loooks totally different than when paked in rfcmp. Grazie mille! (dopo tutto sto discorso in english, vedo che sei italiano anche te!)
Excellent post Tuttle. Maybe i can do a suggestion, when work in detail map in Photoshop put diffuse map in bottom and create a layer with detail map and change blend layer to multiply. This way you have an approximation of the effect.
Thanks all for the support. Everything is working quite good now, both textures and realroad too. Now I'm having big troubles with billboarding/trees (the longest part, it's an hillclimb track full of trees). It would be good to have some sort of "gmt importer" for max like the one for rf1, so i could study how the isi ones are made.
Trees,,, Make a single plane with no subdivisions in the front viewport, generate mapping co-ords *DO NOT enable real world mapping*. Create a multisub material and name it 'Vegetation', then create a submat, use the Bump Specular Map T1 Stamp Vertex shader. Apply the material to the tree. Convert the tree to editable poly. Go into poly subobject mode and select all and make sure the material ID relates to the submat you just made, (this should be ID #1). Set smoothing group to 1. Switch to rotate tool, turn angle snap on, hold shift and duplicate/rotate the plane 90° and clone to element, set that new element to smoothing group 2 (read below why this is done). Go into vertex sub object mode and select all, set the vertex alpha to 99.9%. Make sure the pivot point is at the base. Repeat that process again for other tree textures you want to use (you should just be able to clone the object and change the mat ID) Once you have your trees made use Advanced Painter with the randomiser function, select all your trees and add selection (Add Sel), set up direction to z, align to stroke off. Then select the terrain mesh you want to paint the trees onto and click paint, then paint away. *Save the project, this next process can cause max to crash if memory is limited, I always keep task manager open and monitor the ram usage, if max gets over 2gig, I will close and restart max before I do this next step. After painting, select one tree and in the rollout, click small square button next to the attach button, the selection window will pop up, select all the other trees and click attach. Back to the cloning of the element and rotating it 90°, this will give you an idea of the volume of the tree so you can give each tree enough breathing space so that you don't get them crossing over when they pivot. After you have finished painting all your trees and have joined them together into larger objects, you go into poly subobject mode and select by smoothing group, select SG 2 and delete, that will leave you with the original front facing planes you first made. Now you should be left with a single object with all your trees in it, go to poly subobject mode and select groups of trees and detach to object, you can give them a name if you wish, or you can leave the name and use the batch rename later. One more step you can take is to set up lower level of detail for people who use low, medium settings. I use a script called random selector. Select each tree object and randomly select about 20-30% of faces, then detach them off that object, do it one more time so you have now 3 tree objects instead of 1, then set up visgroups for them. Don't worry about high, but use visgroup B on one object and visgroup C on another. A = everything that you want removed for High detail B = everything that you want removed in addition to VIS group A for medium detail C = everything that you want removed in addition to VIS group A and B for low detail
I tried a demo some years ago and it was a great tool. I think it creates better normal maps than pix plant or Photoshop. However, I am not a guru in textures so it could be that it simply was easier to get a good result. Enviado desde mi GT-I9505 mediante Tapatalk
It is a good tool but if you have to pay that price for a professional Normal map editor I would suggest Quixel NDO, that's another level.
I would add that for road textures normal map is not so important as for other materials. Asphalt has quite a low 3d surface compared to cobblestones for example. The materials typically used in the demos are good examples where a good normal map can make the difference. For the graveltrap in ociokart track I created all textures from original pictures and normal map made a big difference. It should be noted that render tests should be done using viewer or GJED. 3dsimed or BTB are not very reliable for this. I am not sure with RTB since I haven't almost tried it. Enviado desde mi GT-I9505 mediante Tapatalk
