Making a Texture Using MapZone-Fun with Specular
From C4 Engine Wiki
Continuing from Making a Texture Using MapZone, this tutorial is designed to get you better aquianted with other tools other than just MapZone.
Requirements:
- Photoshop CS or Higher
- MapZone
- A Tool for making normal maps from heightmaps (not C4's texture importer)
- The Colormap and heightmap from the previous tutorial
Contents |
First Things First
First we're going to take the heightmap, and generate a normal map for this project. Any tool would do in this case, that can produce a normal map in dot3.
The Colormap
Now we're going to take the color map from the previous tutorial, and desaturate it.
The Normalmap
Next we're going to take the Normal Map, and put it into another layer. This layer should probably be the very bottom layer, since for most of this tutorial, we're not really going to use it.
Desaturate the layer, invert it, and move on.
Now on to the Details
Go back to your now greyscale colormap, and invert it if necessary.
If the cement between the bricks is brighter than the bricks, then it needs to be inverted, if not, ignore this.
Now set your levels to where the cement is black, and the bricks are the only things that have any tone to them.
Your bricks will likely be too bright for the specular map. Since bricks have next to no specular reflection, you're going to have to bring your brightness down quite a bit (think dark grey, but not too dark).
Next, we're going to start selecting the bricks with the least amount of erosion, and damage with the magic wand tool. Select the colormap layer, and turn off visibility, and start selecting bricks on the normalmap layer. To keep things tilable, you'll want to make sure you select a brick entirely by selecting bricks on both edges of the texture on a single row of bricks.
Make a new layer, and set its blend mode to soft light. Name the layer "Detail".
What's Details without Details?
This is where Map|Zone comes in.
Open up Map|Zone, and go to Maps/Noises/Complex 1. Make sure the texture is tilable by messing with the scale while holding the Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) key.
Also make sure you have white and black as your foreground and background colors.
Apply it to the selected bricks in the new layer.
Next we're going to select the most damaged looking bricks. Follow the same guidelines as before, and start selecting bricks.
For a more complex looking specular map, don't select every heavily damaged brick there is. Instead, select most of them. This is entirely optional, and can be skipped.
In the new layer, we're going to render clouds using one of Photoshop's built in filters. Go to Filter>Render>Clouds for this.
Now we're going to apply a noise filter with Filter>Noise>Add Noise. You're going to want to set it to the 40-50 range. Play with the filter until you reach what you want.
Make a new layer, and hide the detail layer, and copy (Ctrl-C or Command-C) from the normalmap layer.
About that Normalmap...
In this new layer, set the blend mode to Difference, and name it "Detail-Damaged"
Paste the copied bricks from the Normalmap layer into this new layer.
You're going to have to set the brightness low in this layer. Set it until it's dark grey, but the bricks are still visible for the most part.
You're done with this layer.
Optional Stuff
If you decided to go with the more complex specular map route, then read on. If not, skip this.
More Normalmap Fun
All bricks that you haven't selected yet, should be selected in this step.
Follow the same guidelines as before.
Copy the bricks from the normalmap layer, and paste into a new or the detail layer.
If you decide to paste them into a new layer, set the blend mode to Soft Light.
Set the brightness for the selected bricks low (dark grey, like the Detail-Damaged layer), and go to Filter>Render>Difference Clouds.
Finishing Up
Delete the normalmap layer, and save the final product as brick_spec.tga in Targa format, replacing your old specular map. Make sure all of your layers are visible before saving.
Related Material
Importing a Texture - More information on using the Texture Importer.
Creating a New Material - How to make a new Material.
Making a Texture Using MapZone - Previous article on making the bump maps, and colormaps.
