Have you not noticed the ground deformation?feanix wrote: So, for instance, a crater would look more 3d, rather than a simple black splodge.
ray tracing and bump mapping
Moderator: Moderators
- SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
- Posts: 7287
- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29
As already stated, it's already there in the new map format, and it looks really cool.feanix wrote:i wonder if bump mapping for the terrain might be an option? I come from a Source Engine background with regards to modding and stuff, and afaik bump mapping doesnt drain too much.
The only hitch is how to include a bump map in the map making process. It might be an idea to tie a bumpmap tile to terrain types in the text file (its been a while since i tried making a map for spring, i can't remember what that file is called).
This would be more difficult, i think, but it would also be great to have bump mapped decals. So, for instance, a crater would look more 3d, rather than a simple black splodge.
- SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
- Posts: 7287
- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29
There are faaar to many units and they are faaar to small for that to be really practical. You might only notice it if you zoomed in on a unit and watched it for a few seconds. Zoomed out, you'd never notice. However, you would likely notice crater bumpmaps every time without having to zoom in (unless you were really zoomed out quite far)mehere101 wrote:NO! Units need bumpmapping before craters.
- SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
- Posts: 7287
- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29
It would probably habitual not to use it much on small units. It's really for the larger units which currently look rather bland.feanix wrote:There are faaar to many units and they are faaar to small for that to be really practical. You might only notice it if you zoomed in on a unit and watched it for a few seconds. Zoomed out, you'd never notice. However, you would likely notice crater bumpmaps every time without having to zoom in (unless you were really zoomed out quite far)mehere101 wrote:NO! Units need bumpmapping before craters.
- Wolf-In-Exile
- Posts: 497
- Joined: 21 Nov 2005, 13:40
FYI, Supreme Commander uses normal mapping for its units.
Bumpmapping is nice and all, perhaps to make it easier to get the hang of normal mapping, but its really obsolete in this day and age.
That being said, if the Spring devs decide a bumpmap system would be easier to implement, I won't complain either.
Bumpmapping is nice and all, perhaps to make it easier to get the hang of normal mapping, but its really obsolete in this day and age.
That being said, if the Spring devs decide a bumpmap system would be easier to implement, I won't complain either.
I agree that bumpmapping is only feasable for larger units, but IIRC the only way a true normal map could be done is by putting it in a new texture channel. IIRC we only have the blue channel free on the second texture, meaning that a greyscale image could be stored in it.
(I do understand this fully, I just don't want another texture layer)
(I do understand this fully, I just don't want another texture layer)
- SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
- Posts: 7287
- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29
A bumpmap isn't expanded to a normal map. Depending on bump map technology used the bump map either does some fudgy crap or is processed into a normal map. The size difference between a bump map and a normal map is generally negligible.FireCrack wrote:^There is absolutely no reason to use normal mapping over bump mapping in this case, or in most cases for that matter. When you use bump-mapping the bumpmap is expanded to a normal map at runtime, it is often quite wastefull to store a normal map on disk.
The reason we use normal maps is:
a) there are standard translation library's written for them so we don't need to make any proprietary code.
b) they save the CPU time from parsing the normal information from the bump map
c) they are industry standard and most high end artists are more familiar working with normals than bump maps
d) they give the artist more control over certain aspects of the image render, bump maps have many flaws in the way they work.