textures, ssbump and heightmap.

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
I've been creating some pavement/road textures and everything's been going fine until i find this ingame:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/grazr/screenshot/559789468023701284

This texture is using an official ssbump and heightmap, though the texture itself is custom. The vtf is a clone of the original except with a re-assigned base texture so that i can find it in the texture browser easier. Not sure why these black squares are showing up (cubemaps are built) since i am otherwise using Valve's own vmt settings for this texture.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/grazr/screenshot/559789468023699736

On my custom texture with a custom ssbump (but without a height map) i get this weird thing.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/grazr/screenshot/559789468023700601

Up close the "weird thing" isn't apparent and the texture looks relatively normal, like how i'd like it.

I've been using ssbump generator, i've heard it's not very good for generating normal maps, but the images don't seem to have any aesthetic issues when generated; and i don't wanna fork out money for crazybump since i'm not a student anymore and am not eligable for an educational license.

EDIT: I've fixed the black squares, now i just need to figure out those weird little blotches which are presumably coming from the ssbump map.

EDIT2: If it makes any difference, i haven't rendered the bump maps with occlusion, mostly because my heightmap is poopoo. But surely that wouldn't result in this kind of error? That just affects shadowing within the texture.
 
Last edited:

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
I'm not entirely sure why but converting the ssbump via .tga rather than directly through the .vtf's got rid of the problem:

road_tex_test0000.jpg

road_tex_test0003.jpg


The vmt remains exactly the same... so odd.

EDIT: OK, second one is with the height+ssbump so the tone matches it's solid tarmac version. Looks like the pavement is suddenly a lot brighter. Guess i need to tone it down in the respective .vtf.
 
Last edited:

Harribo

aa
Nov 1, 2009
871
851
Looks like the pavement is suddenly a lot brighter. Guess i need to tone it down in the respective .vtf.

I think I remember reading somewhere that a texture with a normal map is twice as bright as both the texture and the normal map are reflected.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
I don't have a normal map (concrete doesn't reflect like glass so i never implemented it). But i appreciate what you're saying. When the ssbump map started working properly the reflectivity of radiocity suddenly ~doubled.

Wondering whether to darken the texture or ssbump vtf. I'm also wondering whether my seperate height map and bump map are even being used, this is my first attempt at "occlusion bump maps" and as it stands i've basically utilised/converted an existing height-ssbump.vtf rather than produced my own. I'm still working out the way ssbump generator produces height-ssbump's via heightmaps as alpha layers. Everytime i produce a heightmap it's basically just my texture in greyscale which isn't appropriate enough. The conversion of a base texture is affected by RGB variables.

concrete/concretefloor_008 (or what ever) has a "ssbump", "heightmap", and a "height-ssbump". So i really can't tell whether the seperate heightmap and ssbump is made redundant by the combined "height-ssbump" which is specifically targeted by the vtf.

This is all rather confusing for me. Like why would you have 3 different versions of calculating radiosity on a texture: a greyscale heightmap, an ssbump, and then a heightmap-ssbump. What the hell. You'd think an ssbump would be enough; if not a height-ssbump which appears to handle the other 2 processes in one action. The fact that all 3 are present at once baffles me.
 
Last edited: