{"id":958,"date":"2014-11-30T14:51:35","date_gmt":"2014-11-30T14:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/?p=958"},"modified":"2014-11-30T14:51:35","modified_gmt":"2014-11-30T14:51:35","slug":"generating-normal-maps-from-textures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/2014\/11\/30\/generating-normal-maps-from-textures\/","title":{"rendered":"Generating Normal Maps from Textures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not infrequently that I stumble upon forum posts on hobbiest game dev sites where someone proclaims in response to a question, &#8220;no &#8211; you can&#8217;t make normal \/ bump maps from textures&#8221;. The logic being that there is absolutely nothing in a texture map that would in any way yield useful depth information. This is certainly true &#8211; and it would be also be true to say, &#8220;you can&#8217;t make really really <em>good<\/em> normal maps from just a diffuse texture&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>But you <em>can<\/em> make normal maps which serve a purpose &#8211; you&#8217;ve got a texture which had no bump map packaged with it, you&#8217;re not an artist, and <em>anything<\/em> half decent is better than nothing. It&#8217;s also staggeringly easy and requires no skill, yet I almost never see it mentioned on the internet in these discussions.<\/p>\n<p>So I present to you, Photoshop&#8217;s &#8220;High-Pass&#8221; filter:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-content\/uploads\/NormalMaps.png\" alt=\"NormalMaps\" width=\"768\" height=\"455\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-959\" srcset=\"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-content\/uploads\/NormalMaps.png 768w, https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-content\/uploads\/NormalMaps-300x177.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Take your texture, and do:<br \/>\n<em>Filters -> Other -> High Pass<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Play with the slider until you get something bump-mappy (usually quite low values), desaturate the image, done. You&#8217;re welcome \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not infrequently that I stumble upon forum posts on hobbiest game dev sites where someone proclaims in response to a question, &#8220;no &#8211; you can&#8217;t make normal \/ bump maps from textures&#8221;. The logic being that there is absolutely nothing in a texture map that would in any way yield useful depth information. This&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-useless-advice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p326tq-fs","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":960,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions\/960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}