FREE TEXTURES WITH NORMAL MAPS SOFTWARE
FREE TEXTURES WITH NORMAL MAPS FREE

You may be asking yourself, вЂњwhatвЂ™s a height map?вЂќ Well, itвЂ™s sort of what we made in the last step. YouвЂ™ll want to open the tools section and find the Height map to normal map tool. Our image is now ready to be taken into xNormal. XNormal - why the f*** is this program free? I donвЂ™t make the mostly light pixels all white, however, because when I make the normal map, all those different shades of gray translate to jagged, interesting looking bricks. When I slide the arrow in between the two bumps on the histogram, IвЂ™m making all of the mostly dark mortar pixels black. This is reflected in the histogram by a big bump on the left, the mortar, and a big bump on the right, the bricks.ДЄdjusting levels allows us to pick a brightness level, and tell photoshop anything darker than this level, just go ahead and make that pure black. The brick texture is made up of mostly dark pixels for the mortar, and mostly lighter pixels for the bricks. In this case, photoshop looks at every pixel within our image and lays it on the histogram depending on how bright it is. A histogram is simply a visual representation of numerical data. In photo editing, we adjust levels using a visual tool called a histogram. Rather than try to select all the little cracks and crevices, we can just adjust the levels. In order to do that, all of the mortar would have to be the same color. xNormal will вЂњseeвЂќ the darker areas as being lower than the lighter areas, but I would like all of the mortar be at the same height when we create the normal map. Looking at the desaturated bricks, we see that the mortar is discolored in certain places. Working with only shades of gray also makes it easier to see what we are doing. This removes all the color information, leaving only luminance, which is the information xNormal will use to create the normal map. The first step will be to desaturate the bricks. Preparing our image - desaturation and levels I use Photoshop, but open source hippies can do it just as easily in GIMP, while smoking pot drugs and complaining about вЂњthe man.вЂќ There are better tools for converting photos into normal maps (ahem, crazybump ), but none of them quite so free.Д«efore we create the normal map, weвЂ™ll want to prep the image in our favorite photo editing software. We arenвЂ™t concerned with those advanced features though, today weвЂ™ll be using a small sub-tool within xNormal for converting images into normal maps. It is ostensibly for transferring details from high polygon meshes to their low poly counterparts.

FREE TEXTURES WITH NORMAL MAPS SOFTWARE

xNormal is a great piece of software used by professionals and amateurs alike for baking all sorts of game maps.

FREE TEXTURES WITH NORMAL MAPS FREE

My favorite tool for the job is a free program called xNormal. So letвЂ™s bring it up to date by creating one. ItвЂ™s tileable, and looks great on the patio outside of the Italian Villa youвЂ™re building, but it comes from an era before normal maps could be imported. If youвЂ™ve been building within Second Life for any amount of time youвЂ™ve probably collected a fair number of textures like this one: However, with some great free software, IвЂ™ll show you how you can create your own custom normal maps for your favorite textures:Д¬ustom Normal Maps - de-boring-ing the bricks Fast forward to three years later and few builders are taking advantage of it, even though, as you can see in the above picture, normal maps impart a level of realism that a flat texture canвЂ™t. In April of 2013 the materials project allowed Second Life builders to import custom normal maps for the first time. You can view his work on the SL Marketplace here and his ProMaterials brand. Update, April 8: Bumped up for weekend building inspiration!Д«rookston Holiday has been building in Second Life for 10 years.

Free textures with normal maps