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Normal Maps

R

Rob Richardson

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unitedkingdom
Can anyone tell me how the normal map is generated in Blender?
I have made one up using Gimp but dont know how to get it working.
The program seems to generate its own, which is excellent, but I get a definite left/right divide that looks like an alpha problem.
I have been following "krispy1001's" excellent tutorials but haven't yet got to the relevant section.
Any help with this would be most welcome:)

Rob
 
Well Normal baking means you bake a high-poly model into a low(er)-poly one. This would be blender related, so this video might help you (though you don't need to sculpt the object and such, the baking part is what you want)

 
Well if you still have questions afterwards, just ask. But I thought a video might be more clear then me rattling on through text. The video becomes interesting for your question from around 4 minutes 10 seconds on the timers, as he starts unwrapping and then baking. Although I just noticed it finishes with saving the image, perhaps you need more information from there?
 
How I handle Normal Maps:

- In GIMP, I create a greyscale map. (128,128,128 for neutral, black for recesses, white for tops.)
- I export this greyscale image as .png and assign it to an extra texture in the Texture list of the Material in Blender. See the B2X manual.
- I switch off the Color Influence and switch on the Normals Influence.
- I export the model to FSX
- I use the Texture Converter from Arno's MCX to convert the greyscale to an FS normalmap (blueish icon) and then to .dds.
- Ready to fly!

I'm not an expert on this, but FS uses a different kind of normal map than other software. See the SDK for more on this. Therefore, you might have a problem with a normalmap generated by Blender. Not sure on this however.

Daan
 
Hi Rob,

just to add my :twocents: to what Daan and F747fly said: You can convert a normal map (as generated by Blender) to a FSX-style "bump-map" using a rather "oldie but goldie" piece of software called Mapzone. I wrote about it in the Wiki some time ago... Here's the article:

Normal maps using MapZone

Cheers :)
 
Thank you all very much for the information.
In the process of digesting!
Daan, you said "switch off the Color Influence", where is that in blender?
I will have a lot more questions.

Rob
 
Rob Richardson said:
... "switch off the Color Influence", where is that in blender?
Click to expand...

In the "Properties" panel on the right hand side of your Default workspace, under the "Texture" (red-white checker pattern) tab, there is Mapping and then under that, there is Influence...

Cheers :)
 
capt_x said:
In the "Properties" panel on the right hand side of your Default workspace, under the "Texture" (red-white checker pattern) tab, there is Mapping and then under that, there is Influence...

Cheers :)
Click to expand...

And for further information I'd refer to Capt_X's wiki article called Blender2FSX toolset manual.
 
Hi, I have a question related to creating normal maps:

I have a model with shading (shading smooth/flat) on parts of it, but when I exported it and added flat normal I got big jumps between UV islands and faces with visibly different shading.

Is there a way of exporting shading and removing those UV islands jump?
 
Ok here is photo in Blender and in FSX.

Blender.png
FSX.jpg
 
@Mellin
Ah... ok! That is one interesting machine you're working on, Mellin :D The jumps you are seeing occured to me before when the UV mapping changes direction on the texture sheet. Meaning: one island is mapped upwards and the other downwards (or any other direction). It really shouldn't happen, but it does; and I always blamed my UV mapping for it. Check if your UV mapping has islands of the same object/part oriented in different directions.

BTW, did you draw that normal map as a greyscale heightmap or did you bake it from a high poly model? And did you convert the normal map to a FSX-style bump map?

Hope this helps...

Cheers :)
 
Thanks.

As follows:

1) I don't know how to check if my UV islands are oriented same way.
First I used UV Unwrap with some seams marked on it.
Then I arranged them by moving individual vertices.

2) I created my Normal maps in Paint.NET in greyscale and then I converted them to that weird blue-ish view with special addon:

LowerBodyNormal.jpg
 
@Mellin
You still need to convert this texture into a FSX-style "blue" bump map. You can do that in GIMP/PhotoShop or using MapZone or MCX or... There is a document in the SDK that you should read first: it's the chapter on "Normal map / Height map / Bump map" of the "Texturing Aircraft Models" document.

Cheers :)
 
I did.
This is jpg which I created in Paint.NET and then used to create proper dds dxt5 texture, which I've put to texture folders in FSX files.
 
Urgh. As a general rule, don't make .dds from .jpg, do it from Paint.NET's native format. Less data loss that way.

Handy toolset, Paint.NET!
 
It would be great if Image Tool supported Paint.NET's native format - pdn, but it does not... :(
 
Paint.NET will save as .dds directly; you just have to remember to flip vertically before saving for FSX/P3D. I moved on to Photoshop so haven't done much texture preparation with PDN, but it's a surprisingly capable tool. (and free...)
 
I know!
As you can see from the photos it's more likely to be a problem with UV islands orientation.

Is there a way of fixing that without redoing whole UV mapping and creating textures?
 
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