Bump maps?
 

How would you make a bump map for a converted SH3 unit?

an occlusion map ?

keltos

No, it is the green skin file that makes bumps in the ship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_mapping

Not sure what happened but it appears like this on the model.

http://img68.imageshack.us/img68/7194/ggvh6.jpg

That's because SH4 uses ambient occlusion maps, not plain bump maps...

Ambient occlusion maps affect lighting. SH4 doesn't use bump maps, it uses normal maps. A bump map can't be converted into a normal map, unless it's been normalised or you'll get weird artifacts. Do a google search on normalising a bump map. There should be an nvidia dds plugin to do it with phtoshop.

Actually, SH4 uses both and more. You can use:

- Base texture
- Ambient occlusion
- Specular
- Bump map (or normal map)

Bump maps are usually generated from a high poly source model, where you actually model details like rivets, window/door frames, etc. The low poly model (which you use in game) can then be enhanced with the bump map to fake higher and lower areas (icw. light/shadows) on a flat surface, which looks real flat without a bump map. There are more techniques and tricks to make or enhance a bump map (for instance material like bricks (cement), wood (grain), steel (welds) etc.), but for this you should google for bump map tutorials. This is not specifically related to the game.

PS: if you don't have a high poly model, you are out of luck and need to rely on other tricks and techniques, like crazybump. Just realise this will never be perfect and may sometimes even look odd as it's just guesses in the end...

I thought bump maps only represented height information and are black and white maps that can be painted in a graphics package. Whereas normal maps represent a vector of the difference in normal between a loy poly model and a high poly model and are RGB normalised files?

What you are referring to are height maps. They too can be used for bump mapping, and even combined with or converted to normals maps (though not with the same accuracy). Basically the term bump mapping is the 'effect' and does not tell you what type of technique to achieve the effect.

The game however does not use height maps are far as I know (but I have not looked at every single texture), only normal maps so you were right on that.

So when speaking of bump mapping, you have different methods of achieving this, with different pros/cons, but generally normal mapping gives better results.

Have a look at some of the _N01 texture files, you'll see what I mean ;) They are exactly what you describe.

See here for more info:
http://www.modwiki.net/wiki/Texturin...s._height_maps

PS: in my previous post you see I describe both techniques, sort of... :)

PS2: so basically you were right when saying SH4 uses normal maps. But it does use bump maps too. They are just the same... again, sort of... xD

:up:
http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/237/okyn8.gif
...and for All ...
simply look UnifiedRenderControler structure ...

I've noticed that most if not all the ship folders have the ******_N01.dds bump map textures, but the submarine folders don't. Does that seem right?

I'm wondering, cause when I try to make a skin for the subs (Gato for this example), and I dont line the limber holes up with the original skin, you can see where the original limber holes were when you veiw the sub at an angle in game. I'll try to post a pic of what I'm talking about tomorrow.