searching for Normap maps

rra · Post #1by **rra** » 05.10.2006, 10:13

Yesterday I tried several NormalMaps from the Earth and Moon
from the MotherLode but none (?) of them
seem to work correctly with the upcoming 1.5.0 Celestia build.
Maybe I have overlooked some of the Motherlode's maps, so:

Can anyone point me to some Normal maps (4K++)
of the Moon and/or Earth build for the latest Celestia ??

Ren?©

cartrite · Post #2by **cartrite** » 05.10.2006, 17:19

rra wrote:

Yesterday I tried several NormalMaps from the Earth and Moon
from the MotherLode but none (?) of them
seem to work correctly with the upcoming 1.5.0 Celestia build.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. One of the enhancements of 1.5.0 will be specular highlights when normalmaps are rendered. In order to use that for earth, the spec map would have to have a dark gray area for the land areas instead of black. Mabey you need to change the spec map? Also if your spec color and power are not set right that may cause problems too.

The only normalmap I use that was downloaded from the motherlode is John van Vliet's Mars VT normalmap and that works fine with the cvs builds. The normalmap for Earth I created myself and that works fine too.

Fridger is supposed to make some tools available that will allow you to make your own normalmaps. So when they beome available you could always make your own.

cartrite

rra · Post #3by **rra** » 05.10.2006, 18:38

Well , I am looking for DDS normal maps , and it seems

threat about Bug in shader in latest build:

Fridger is correct: my recent change breaks DXT compressed normal maps unless they are in the DXT5nm format. I didn't think that anyone had actually used DXT for normal maps, since the quality is quite poor without the new technique that I implemented a couple days ago. I'm not sure if yet if we should come up with some other method to indicate that a normal map should be interpreted as DXT5nm. It could be done with a new SSC field, so that you would add something like "CompressedNormalMap true" to an ssc definition if you wanted to use a compressed normal map. The shortcoming of that approach is that it won't work for normal maps used inside cmod meshes. What would be idea is if there was a special texture format for compressed normal maps . . . I was hoping that the tools to create compressed normal maps would create files marked with the format 3Dc, but it appears that the files are just plain old DXT5.

--Chris

that Normap maps have to have a different format to be valid for CVS Celesta (a ka 1.5.0 pre) ; I could use BumpMaps or non-DDS Normap maps, but they are way slower, at least on my system, also they look "funny" .
I will have a try with different SpecMaps , may be that helps.

Ren?©

cartrite · Post #4by **cartrite** » 05.10.2006, 18:46

There is a problem with cvs versions and dds normalmaps. There may be some solutions in this thread. The rgb channels have to be remapped or something. I'm not sure anyone else has done that except Fridger.
http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10033
http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10088
I haven't used dds normalmaps for quite a while now so I really don't know how to help with that one.

Post #5by **t00fri** » 05.10.2006, 19:37

rra,

well I am repeating myself here. ALL nm16-based normalmaps (i.e. ALL you find on the motherlode) are grossly incorrect north and south of the equator.

Somehow people don't seem to care ;-)

Also, our nmtools (hopefully appearing VERY soon for download in CelestialMatters), will allow everyone to do highest quality /gigantic/ normalmaps without any of the mentioned problems. These programs work extremely fast. For "tiny" normalmaps like 4k or 8k, it only takes a few seconds, for example.

I am sorry that I am too busy to finish my tutorial writing...hence the delays.

Bye Fridger

rra · Post #6by **rra** » 05.10.2006, 20:05

I know Fridger ,
I guess I just have to wait a little longer,
then I can make/edit my own maps .

But don't hurry, take your time ,

Ren?©

By the way: are these tools going to be windows executables ??

cartrite · Post #7by **cartrite** » 05.10.2006, 20:25

I would wait for the nmtools to become available but here is how to create a dxt5 normalmap if there are some who can't wait.

If you use the gimp and have the dds plugin, here is something I came up with. First you'll need a png normalmap.

Open it with the gimp and click Image/Mode/Decompose to create 3 seperate grayscale images. This is done by unchecking "decompose to layers". Take one of the 3 images and click file/new and create a new black grayscale image the same size as the normalmap.
Copy the red channel and paste onto the new image. Then click Layer/New Layer. Copy the blue channel ( this should be all white) and paste onto the new image. Click Layer/New Layer again. Then copy the green layer and paste onto the new image. Click Layer/New Layer again. You should now have a 4 layer grayscale image. Compose it as rgba. Save as yournormalmap.dds and chose mipmaps and dxt5 compression.

These shots show a 4k dds dxt5 normalmap I just created running on the cvs verion I installed via the setup I made available. The first 2 are rendered in ogl2. The third is rendered in basic and the last is rendered in ogl/vertex program. I beleive the dxt5nm format only works with ogl2.

cartrite

Post #8by **t00fri** » 05.10.2006, 20:28

rra wrote:I know Fridger ,
I guess I just have to wait a little longer,
then I can make/edit my own maps .

But don't hurry, take your time ,

Ren?©

By the way: are these tools going to be windows executables ??

Besides the sources, the distribution contains executables for ALL 4 operating systems, Win32, Mac(PPC), Mac(Intel) and Linux, as well as a Windows setup.exe to install the tools.

The tools are actually finished since a long time. Only my tutorial is not yet completed.

For sure, one reason is that after starting with some "pre-exercises" in the forum, I was totally demotivated by the high degree of ignorance wrto using command-line tools under Windows.

After months of developing our sophisticated tools, I was blamed by some users for being not sufficiently pedagogical. As a matter of fact, it is very hard for me to imagine how little "expert" Windows users actually know about their own "every-day" system ;-)

. At the end of the day, I keep asking myself, why I know all these things about an operating system that I rarely use myself ;-)

Bye Fridger

Post #9by **t00fri** » 05.10.2006, 20:33

Cartrite,

but for the small normalmaps for which the dds plugin still works, there is a very simple command using the 'convert' tool (ImageMagick) that does the required job.

Bye Fridger

cartrite · Post #10by **cartrite** » 05.10.2006, 20:38

Fridger wrote:

but for the small normalmaps for which the dds plugin still works, there is a very simple command using the 'convert' tool (ImageMagick) that does the required job.

I never tried that with IM. That would probally do it easier. Also I'm not sure how big an image the gimps dds plugin can handle. I think it had corruption problems with the larger files.

Personally, I can wait for your tools to come out. I'm in no hurry. I was just playing around with the dds format because I haven't done so for a while.

cartrite

Starshipwright · Post #11by **Starshipwright** » 05.10.2006, 22:17

I agree that it is better to wait and have a good tutorial rather than having endless "How do you..." threads posted in the forums.