Custom Map Makers

Hey guys!!

As some of you might know, decals are a major part of a map.
I believe it was in 2005 that the game F.E.A.R caused great impact by using decals a long with parallax mapping, giving the feeling of depth.

As any of you tried this in Urban Terror? Does it look good? Is it worth trying?
I'd like to try it, but I don't know how Parallax mapping works.
So far, the only one I know who made it work in Rayne.

What do you guys think?

I think the _b maps are parallax mapping,

This is a test i made some time ago:



This tesxture have one normal map made with the gimp plugin and a _b map that was made from the normal map.

I made it first to greyscale then loverd the contras making it less detailed.

I've never seen the game so i dont know how they have done it, but i think you can do enough with just parallax mapping combined with bumpmapping.

I'm proberly not 100% correct and i hope Rayne will correcte me and give you an clearer awnser when he get time.

That looks rather good!

PLEASE LOOK AT PICTURES FROM BOTTOM TO TOP, OTHERWISE THEY'LL MAKE NO SENSE
Don't make _b maps from _n maps.
You have to learn the difference between _b maps used for bump mapping and _b maps used for parallax mapping.
_b maps used for bump mapping are used to add some depth and reflection. So they can be more detailed, but they have to be .tga files and have to contain an alpha channel.
Unlike of _n maps alpha channel doesn't works the same way. Clean _n map without an alpha channel has 100% reflectivity. A _b map without an alpha channel however doesn't look like that and the reflection is rather low.
One problem i encountered with parallax mapping is that it always look boring due to lack of shadows.
There are couple of ways this can be fixed.
One way is to bake occlusion directly into a diffuse map. Downside to this technique is that the occlusion is always visible no matter the light intensity.
Another way is to add it through _n maps. By selecting the red and green channel, painting those 2 into the blue channel then raising the brightness and lowering the contrast we get occlusion. This occlusion is light dependent, which means occlusion fades out on parts of the surface that are closer to the light.

This is not good, all my attachments are inverted...didn't know this is gonna happen.

So, it is worth trying i guess
Gonna do it!

It's definitely worth trying. But keep in mind that making a height map is easy, making a good height map is art.
You have to know the diffuse map and determine what should and what shouldn't be parallax mapped.
Never go nuts with depth, more depth equals more distortion and that never looks good.

and what is now better? _n or _b? or _n and _b? and is there a _b-plugin for gimp or ps?

What is better is a question nobody can answer cause there's no correct answer.
Both maps serve it's purpose and their purposes are quite different.
I rarely to almost never use .tga _b maps to add depth and specular, _n maps do a much better job. _b maps i use only for parallax mapping.
There is no real height map generator, well technically there is but the results are never precise enough.
Height maps are best made manually. In some cases the diffuse map can be used to derive a decent height map, but most of the time you'll have to hand paint it or the result will be a highly distorted surface that can only look bad.
Which is why i use _n maps with a modified blue channel. Occlusion fakes depth and replaces parallax mapping to a certain degree. Of course it's depth is rather limited and doesn't works well on all surfaces but it definitely works better than most height maps created through simple desaturation of the diffuse map (which is how most people create them).

I've a nice link to a tutorial, I'll post when I get home