Help! BumpMap not working!?!

Kingsnake · Post #1by **Kingsnake** » 26.11.2002, 08:32

Hi guys,
I seem to be having a problem getting bump mapping to work on my system. No matter what I try it just doesn't seem to work. I realize it may be due to hardware limitations, but I was wondering if there are some things that I might have missed...

Here are my system specs:

Dell Dimension 8100
P4 @ 1.3 GHz
768MB RIMM RAMBUS
nVidia GeForce2 MX 32MB (I know, I know, I really need to upgrade this! Soon! :wink:

)
Detonator Driver v.40.72 (currently - have tried many and so far this one seems to work the best for me believe it or not!)

I've made the neccessary changes to the solarsys.ssc file (as far as I know - I've been know to screw that up...

) and I've tried several different versions/resolutions (e.g. 2k, 4k, 8k...) of both textures and bumpmaps, but I can never seem to get mine to look as nice as some of the gorgeous pictures I see posted here all of the time... :cry:

Is there a quick "checklist" someone could run through to maybe help me troubleshoot this? I would surely love to see those effects on my screen instead of just on this message board... :lol:

I looked around the forums a bit for something pertaining to this, so if this has been discussed before, please forgive me, I must have inadvertently overlooked it.

Thanks,
Sean

Post #2by **t00fri** » 26.11.2002, 17:26

Kingsnake wrote:Hi guys,
I seem to be having a problem getting bump mapping to work on my system. No matter what I try it just doesn't seem to work. I realize it may be due to hardware limitations, but I was wondering if there are some things that I might have missed...

Here are my system specs:

Dell Dimension 8100
P4 @ 1.3 GHz
768MB RIMM RAMBUS
nVidia GeForce2 MX 32MB (I know, I know, I really need to upgrade this! Soon! :wink: )
Detonator Driver v.40.72 (currently - have tried many and so far this one seems to work the best for me believe it or not!)

I've made the neccessary changes to the solarsys.ssc file (as far as I know - I've been know to screw that up... 8O ) and I've tried several different versions/resolutions (e.g. 2k, 4k, 8k...) of both textures and bumpmaps, but I can never seem to get mine to look as nice as some of the gorgeous pictures I see posted here all of the time... :cry:

Is there a quick "checklist" someone could run through to maybe help me troubleshoot this? I would surely love to see those effects on my screen instead of just on this message board... :lol:

I looked around the forums a bit for something pertaining to this, so if this has been discussed before, please forgive me, I must have inadvertently overlooked it. ;) :oops:

Thanks,
Sean

What happens when you toggle CTRL-p
in case of a supposedly bumpmapped planet?

Bye Fridger

Kingsnake · Post #3by **Kingsnake** » 27.11.2002, 02:43

What happens when you toggle CTRL-p
in case of a supposedly bumpmapped planet?

Bye Fridger

Hi Fridger,
It only seems to activate the specular highlighting... ?
Any other suggestions?
I forgot to mention I'm running Win Me, if that makes any diffference...
Thanks for your help!

Cheers!
Sean

Don. Edwards · Post #4by **Don. Edwards** » 27.11.2002, 02:50

Well its not your video card as it is more than capable of bumpmapping. I know you probably already know this but make sure you don't have a # and a space in front of your bumpmap line in the solarsystem.ssc. If you do remove them and try again. If your lines are ok then try a smaller resolution bumpmap. I have a 64meg GeForce4 TI and I don't have much in the way of luck getting a bumpmap of the size 4096 to work. You can try to resize your bumpmap down to the next smaller size and try again. If you do resize and it ends up woking take a close look to make sure you arn't getting any kind of grid effect from the resize. If you did then you need to try a bluring effect to clean it up. If all this still doesn't get you up and running than I am at a complete loss as to what the problem may be.
Good luck.

Kingsnake · Post #5by **Kingsnake** » 27.11.2002, 05:28

Don. Edwards wrote:Well its not your video card as it is more than capable of bumpmapping. I know you probably already know this but make sure you don't have a # and a space in front of your bumpmap line in the solarsystem.ssc. If you do remove them and try again. If your lines are ok then try a smaller resolution bumpmap. I have a 64meg GeForce4 TI and I don't have much in the way of luck getting a bumpmap of the size 4096 to work. You can try to resize your bumpmap down to the next smaller size and try again. If you do resize and it ends up woking take a close look to make sure you arn't getting any kind of grid effect from the resize. If you did then you need to try a bluring effect to clean it up. If all this still doesn't get you up and running than I am at a complete loss as to what the problem may be.
Good luck.

Yep, that was the problem - I had a # in the line! I did not know that actually, so thanks for the tip! I assume that the # sign is like a REM command? I'm still learning this here...
It seems to be working great now, but it's bringing my pc to it's knees! I'll have to try a few different res textures and see which ones offer the best balance between quality and performance.

Anyway, that did the trick, thank you Don!

Cheers!
Sean

Don. Edwards · Post #6by **Don. Edwards** » 27.11.2002, 05:44

Great to here it. Yes the # sign and a space are used to disable that line in the .ssc file. It comes in handy. I tend to use lower res bumpmap textures for the most part and as long as your not trying to zoom in to close you wont see to much of a diference. The same goes for the nightside textures. I would as a rule keep them to half the size as your main texture. So if your using 2048x1024 texture try getting away with a 1024x512 bump and nightside maps. If you go up to a 4096x2048 you may have serious slow downs so I would keep to the smaller textures. Although your card can do the rendering its not to say you should cram it full of textures to crunch. You didn't say if the card was an MX 200 or MX 400. This will make a diference as well. GeForce2 MX 200 cards have a narrow 64bit memory path were the MX 400 has the 128bit memory path. Of course this makes the MX 400 faster for rendering but not by a whole lot. Before I got my GeForce4 TI4200 I used a GeForce2 MX 200 with only 32megs and I was able to do a great many things with it. It was just a little on the slow side at times. Good luck and I hope you enjoy your time with Celestia.