Bump and Spec maps

[JoeW]

I hope I'm in the right forum. I'm trying to do a bump map and spec map for a FSX plane That somehow the ones that came with it is no good. I'm using CrazyBump and photoshop 6 and Imagetool thats in the SDK.
When I make a bump map with crazybump I get what appears to be sunlight coming from the ground under the bottom of the plane. The top is on shadow. I have been told this is controlled by the bump. I'm using the same program to do the spec maps. it doesn't matter if I make the spec light or dark it's still the same.
I have the nVidia addon for Photoshop that is supposed to make bump maps but it does the same thing. What am i doing wrong?
Thanks

Joe W.

[adlabs6]

I'm not experienced with this, so I'm just venturing a guess. Try inverting the bump map image and see what result you get.

[AGNT_Matt]

never tried FSX bump mapping but theres a simple way to immitate it, for rivets draw a 1 px dot in whith then off a corner use black, and again a 1px dot. what you do then is in the alpha channel set the white to a very slightly reflective greyish hue, and the shadow in white or a very light grey. the trick is to give the impression of rivets although they arent actually there. i'll try and get an image of a buccaneer paintkit a m8 is working on. this works in FS9 too!

FS9 EXAMPLE:

[e-b-o-]

If the normal map turns black it isn't loaded at all. Check namings, path and material settings.

[JoeW]

The bump is loading because I can see the paint under it. It's just dark and the light is coming from the ground not from above. I have some instructions about Copying the red channel to the alpha, inverting the green, make the red black, and the blue should be white. This doesn't work either, The light is still coming from the ground.
JoeW

[adlabs6]

Can you do operations on the bump map as though it were just a plain image file? If so, then invert it (CTRL + I in Photoshop) in that mode. Inverting the entire image map (if it works like all the other bump map files I've made) will also invert the direction the light is coming from.

[e-b-o-]

Can you do operations on the bump map as though it were just a plain image file? If so, then invert it (CTRL + I in Photoshop) in that mode. Inverting the entire image map (if it works like all the other bump map files I've made) will also invert the direction the light is coming from.

this doesn't work... you can invert the red and the green channel, but you still have to keep the blue channel.

I think the easiest way figuring out what's going wrong is if you post an image of a original FS bump map and yours...

[adlabs6]

Thanks e-b-o-, they must be doing something different than what I'm used to. In past years I did texture work for my brother, who would build 3D polygonal objects. All of my bump maps and specular maps, and even normal maps were separate grayscale heightfields back then, and that's what I assumed would be the case in FSX.

[e-b-o-]

hmmm, let me write a quick step by step tutorial.

This is the Target Tobruk He111, on the first image you will see the plain geometry.



Now I'm preparing the normal map out of the psd master file (done by Blowhard, btw...) All parts with an indentation will be dark (panel lines), parts who stick out will be white (rivets in this case). Everything without any hight (normal) information should be neutral grey. Your image should look like this now:



Now you open CrazyBump, open your image, adjust the sliders for the look you're aiming for. (the normals in this example are too strong, it's for making it more obvious).
Now you copy your CrazyBump created map to the clipboard, paste it into a new photoshop file and safe it in the needed file format (the last time I safed sirectly in CB it creates an alpha channel for the normal map, in some games it doesn't work....).
Your texture should look now this way:



Texture and geometry looks now like this:



You can see also how it looks with the diffuse texture applied:



If you follow these steps you should have a working normal map. The only thing I don't know if FSX reads them different, this is why I was asking for a original one

hope this helps, ebo

[JoeW]

The only thing I have been doing different is saving it in Crazybump as tga or bmp. I'll try to save to clipboard and paste it to photoshop and see.
I have the bump addon for photoshop and it seems to work but I haven't tryed it.
I'm trying to do this for a commercial plane that has a bump and spec but both are flat, no lines and solid color. I would rather not say what plane it is.
I will try the above suggestions.
Thanks
Joe W.