This shows a complete workflow for how nDo2 can be used alongside
This video explains and demonstrates how nDo2 can be used to produce normal maps.
First of all he bakes a normal map from the high poly to the low poly model. To set up the high poly model he smoothed the entire model by 2 levels of division and then saved that down as an obj ready for the next step. He uses a free tool called xNormal to bake the normals from the high poly model to the low poly model, you first load up the high poly model in xNormal, this is the one that's just been smoothed and secondly in the low poly section load up the low poly model which you don't need to smooth.
You can create blockers which are small planes that you insert around you model in tight spaces where you want to avoid surfaces reading adjacent surfaces for the ambient occlusion bake.
xNormal should be set up so that you are baking a tangent space map, this is much more useable in games as they are much more easily editable. Setting anti-aliasing to 4x will help make the map a lot smoother and accurate.
Once that's done he brings that into photoshop and looks at some AKs for reference and adds in block shapes for all the little details he's missed like small indentations.
There are 3 types or ways of making normals within photoshop with the use of nDo2.
The first is by making selections with the marquee tools and then simply pressing the convert selection to normal button in the nDo2 window.
This will automatically make a path so your normal is lossless and can be scaled up.
Pressing the sculpt button in nDo2 changes the photoshop tool to the brush allowing you to simply paint in details you want to add with (by default) a white colour which will once applied make the normal appear to rise.
You know you're in sculpt mode because the normals change color to only green and blue and you can use filters in photoshop that you can't normally use with folder groups in nDo2.
Selecting an area and filling it with white, or using a brush, then converting the solid to a normal will also work. Selections - shapes - solids and brushes - are essentially the three ways of making normals, all of which you just press the convert to normal button once you're done to finalise it.
In this example I have filled the area with pink.
You can also use the shape tool which makes smart objects which are lossless and scalable.
In this example the shape is drawn in green and is identifiable as a smart object by looking at the layers palette where it has a small rectangle in its preview window at the bottom right.
In this example I have filled the area with pink.
You can also use the shape tool which makes smart objects which are lossless and scalable.
In this example the shape is drawn in green and is identifiable as a smart object by looking at the layers palette where it has a small rectangle in its preview window at the bottom right.
Once a normal has been made, you can use the normal marquee selection tools in sculpt mode and alt-drag to make copies of them.
Bevel type changes the way the edge of a normal shape you've defined will behave, you can have: Inner, outer, Emboss, Groove, Stroke inner, Stroke outer, and Stroke emboss.
Slant decides if the shape you've made will go up or down. Either appear to rise or sink.
Curve types change how the normal behaves, and they are shapes you can choose which at side on views of the way it raises and lowers the normal around the circumference of your shapes.
The zip button on nDo2 allows for you to easily make your PSD files more efficient and have quicker loading times, it's always worth using this tool as it's non-destructive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwj0mQTMrK8 - nDo2 workflows #1: Creating hard-surface designs
Simply by using the marquee tool and filling areas in with white you can create shapes that you can then convert to normals with nDo2. Using a soft eraser on your white shapes will make the normal appear to blend into the next shape so you can keep the whole thing looking like one solid piece very easily.
On the same layer you can use this same technique with varying degrees of shades of grey to achieve different heights in the normal. If you were to place a black square over a white square it would appear to be a divot or sunk in with the standard normal settings. You can reverse the normal so darker shades will appear to rise instead.
The hard light blending mode you can make additions to your normals that follow the existing curvature of a raised or lowered section.
Disabling edge bevel allows for objects touching the edge of the document to flow out and be tileable. This way you avoid have a break in things you want to be continued and repeated.
In this tutorial it is explained how you can combine normals drawn in nDo2 as well as automatically created normals from nDo2 to make a better overall normal map.
First of all the diffuse map has to be cleaned up so that players don't recognise small pieces of unique information so easily and can identify that object as being quite obviously repeated. This helps with immersion.
Once you've used the clone brush or healing brush to remove all the unwanted obvious markings on your diffuse you can begin to colour it and add more of your own textures.
In this example they've used a metallic object and added their own concrete textures to give it more weight.
A cool tip to make things appear to pop out without editing internal detail is if you create a selection of the part you want to appear to stick out, then fill it with 50% grey, set the layer blending method to vivid light then apply a bevel and emboss layer effect you maintain all the internal detail while also gaining a lightening and darkening effect on the borders. You can ofcourse edit and tweak this without harming your underlying textures.
Converting the diffuse texture to a normal map in nDo2 will be the first normal map made. This is the easiest to do and only requires you flatten your layers down then select all and click the convert button in nDo2. At this point you can either choose to use presets or edit it yourself by using the sliders to adjust how the normal is made.
nDo2 should separate the entire thing into 3 different sets, large dents, small scratches and tiny scratches. You can edit each of these separately.
The larger details are best made by hand in this tutorial as they're large square shapes. The large dents layer can be made very subtle using the sliders so your own hand-drawn normal map can have more effect overall.
You can create your shapes using a brighter colour and a darker colour for the background. All of nDo2s normals use the brighter colours to focus on and create bevel and embossing effects that will turn into the normal map.
If instead you could create your shapes using shapes/vectors you can have a lossless normal map which you can resize however much you like as there is no chance of losing quality. This can also be done using work paths, if you select the work path in the layers tab then hit the convert button in nDo2 you will get a similar result.
Mixing the normal maps together is easy, just copy one of the normal maps you've made and paste it above the other as on a separate layer. Select the top most layer of the two in the layers palette and click Mix > Overlay Normal, to blend them.
First of all the diffuse map has to be cleaned up so that players don't recognise small pieces of unique information so easily and can identify that object as being quite obviously repeated. This helps with immersion.
Once you've used the clone brush or healing brush to remove all the unwanted obvious markings on your diffuse you can begin to colour it and add more of your own textures.
In this example they've used a metallic object and added their own concrete textures to give it more weight.
A cool tip to make things appear to pop out without editing internal detail is if you create a selection of the part you want to appear to stick out, then fill it with 50% grey, set the layer blending method to vivid light then apply a bevel and emboss layer effect you maintain all the internal detail while also gaining a lightening and darkening effect on the borders. You can ofcourse edit and tweak this without harming your underlying textures.
Converting the diffuse texture to a normal map in nDo2 will be the first normal map made. This is the easiest to do and only requires you flatten your layers down then select all and click the convert button in nDo2. At this point you can either choose to use presets or edit it yourself by using the sliders to adjust how the normal is made.
nDo2 should separate the entire thing into 3 different sets, large dents, small scratches and tiny scratches. You can edit each of these separately.
The larger details are best made by hand in this tutorial as they're large square shapes. The large dents layer can be made very subtle using the sliders so your own hand-drawn normal map can have more effect overall.
You can create your shapes using a brighter colour and a darker colour for the background. All of nDo2s normals use the brighter colours to focus on and create bevel and embossing effects that will turn into the normal map.
If instead you could create your shapes using shapes/vectors you can have a lossless normal map which you can resize however much you like as there is no chance of losing quality. This can also be done using work paths, if you select the work path in the layers tab then hit the convert button in nDo2 you will get a similar result.
Mixing the normal maps together is easy, just copy one of the normal maps you've made and paste it above the other as on a separate layer. Select the top most layer of the two in the layers palette and click Mix > Overlay Normal, to blend them.
