- Mar 11, 2013
- 892
- 1,050
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Bump_map
They're called the same here what's the difference?
I propose an Arctic Theme Pack
- Thread starter iiboharz
- Start date
- Status
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Bump_map
They're called the same here what's the difference?
A bump map uses a black and white image where a white patch means it will "raise" the texture while a black patch makes the texture "lower" itself. You can use any greyscale between black and white to have a texture appear higher or lower. What bump maps can't do however is tell lighting to smear over an edge, so it's always a hard cut making it a really low quality solution. That's where normal maps come in.
Normal maps use way more colors than just black and white (the whole RGB color spectrum in fact). With that, they can also tell a lighting calculator like VRAD to smear light over the surface it's applied to resulting in a far more believable texture and a higher quality one as well. There is no performance difference between bump maps and normal maps, so why use the lower quality bump maps when you can use the higher quality normal maps? Compiles don't take longer using normal maps and since it's going to be baked into lightmaps anyway the map won't be an fps wh*re using the higher quality solution.
Normal maps and bump maps are part of a 3-part family of height maps, the 3rd one being displacement maps which make the actual texture be 3D, using the same information as normal maps to physically make a textured surface 3D. Only one problem: Source doesn't support it. At least not without some serious coding changes to the shaders powering it.
tl:dr bump maps and normal maps are 2 completely different things. That VDC article should be renamed Hight Maps which is what bump maps and normal maps actually are.
Hope this clears things out a bit.
Last edited:
wareya
L420: High Member
- Jun 17, 2012
- 493
- 191
That is an incredibly bad explanation of how normal maps work.
Basically:
A height map is the actual height of the texture at that point. The highness of it. What it doesn't show is the angle and direction of that part of the texture, which means that bumpmapping algorithms need to perform crazy calculations at runtime (or load time) to get lighting angle information out of it.
With normal maps, they don't have to do that crazy math -- they just do some vector math between the light source and the normal of that pixel -- so it's both more accurate and faster.
However, you can't do "parallax" mapping without a height map. TF2 doesn't support parallax mapping, though, so it's a moot point.
There's also "self-shadowed bumpmaps", but those are basically just pre-baked optional lightmaps which are interpolated between. They're locked into an intensity, ambience, and "pitch", and their "yaw" is mostly inaccurate, and they end up being more ugly than normal maps most of time time. If we could use both at once, you could probably get something interesting out of mixing normal mapping with SSBmapping.
Basically:
A height map is the actual height of the texture at that point. The highness of it. What it doesn't show is the angle and direction of that part of the texture, which means that bumpmapping algorithms need to perform crazy calculations at runtime (or load time) to get lighting angle information out of it.
With normal maps, they don't have to do that crazy math -- they just do some vector math between the light source and the normal of that pixel -- so it's both more accurate and faster.
However, you can't do "parallax" mapping without a height map. TF2 doesn't support parallax mapping, though, so it's a moot point.
There's also "self-shadowed bumpmaps", but those are basically just pre-baked optional lightmaps which are interpolated between. They're locked into an intensity, ambience, and "pitch", and their "yaw" is mostly inaccurate, and they end up being more ugly than normal maps most of time time. If we could use both at once, you could probably get something interesting out of mixing normal mapping with SSBmapping.
Last edited:
It's just a hueslide I know, but a while ago I produced this for highville and never finished putting it together, and I think it could maybe look cool in an arctic map (the colours might want changing a bit more to reflect less summer/ocean and more winter though)?
From:
From:
Last edited:
Sheltr
L3: Member
- Feb 24, 2011
- 107
- 73
Since everyone is showing off their variations on this sky box I might as well show off mine!
Link: Hidden variant on the one above!
Link: Hidden variant on the one above!
- Mar 6, 2013
- 1,045
- 625
Since everyone is showing off their variations on this sky box I might as well show off mine!
Link: Hidden variant on the one above!
Awesome theme! I want to use this one sometime...
Last edited:
Since everyone is showing off their variations on this sky box I might as well show off mine!
Link: Hidden variant on the one above!
Now that looks bloody brilliant. Might be a bit too dark though, especially the bottom parts.
EDIT I just saw the hidden version you have with the green glow and holy shit does that look amazing.
Last edited:
Since everyone is showing off their variations on this sky box I might as well show off mine!
Link: Hidden variant on the one above!
That looks gorgeous.
That would be awesome indeed.
Lampenpam
aa
- Mar 23, 2013
- 1,013
- 347
Personally I preffer extracting the files manually to my tf2 folder, you I can if needed only extract a part of the files or to a specific location
Well option for a launcher and manual then.
Since everyone is showing off their variations on this sky box I might as well show off mine!
Link: Hidden variant on the one above!
I think it's pretty dark in my opinion, the env settings for it might be a bit wonky against such a dark background and extremely blue sky. Sort of like how this is done with it being a bit more bright with some stars in the background too. Good work though so far
- Status