don't use fake bumps. ever. decent texture work will be much more effective. whoever came up with the concept of fake bumps should, in my opinion, retire their membership here for conceiving such a ridiculous concept and planting it into everybody's minds that it's a super fantastic idea. anybody on modacity will agree. all fake bumps manage to accomplish is amplifying the contrast, adding an ugly black outline around places where there should be depth, distracting from the rest of the details in the texture. almost looking cell-shaded.

but if you absolutely must know, here's some tut

http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?16599-Fake-Bumping/page3

^^Sadly he's right on some of that,im not goin to fake bump anything anymore,just use the diffuse texture and decent shaders,because honestly in my op there is no good method.

Most people fake bump the spartan as it's more detailed on his armor but that same method I find that it doesn't work well on other things or bipeds.
Edited by DarkLord0912 on Feb 9, 2011 at 12:58 PM

What gay boy said :P ^^
Edited by anonymous_2009 on Feb 9, 2011 at 07:59 PM

But which looks better? Multipurpose normal overlays or detail normals?

In my honest op,I've done several ways,altering the diffuse texture or the detail slot way and to me they all look the same.

I've never done the mulitpurpose way I would like to give it a shot,but im sure it looks the same also.

here's a way that will work just as well

1. open texture in mspaint

2. add bold-ass black lines to all the detail outlines using the pencil tool and highest thickness

3. congrats. you got fake bumps

Me and gwunty found this out 2 years ago and I was the first person to release something with that method but it sucks now

Also I don't use photoshoop for my "fake bumps". Photoshop isnt right. I always add the blue channel anyways to the diffuse, regardless.

*never mind*
Edited by anonymous_2009 on Feb 9, 2011 at 08:13 PM

I always think, the blue channel only makes the "shadowy" effect on the edges of the bitmaps supposedly, and IMO, it does not look good at all, not one bit. Looks like someone smeared black ink all over the edges.

Blue channel represents normals have an angle of 90 degree's what the normal's are being baked. So in other words flat and straight out. Why would you use that channel?
Edited by anonymous_2009 on Feb 9, 2011 at 09:30 PM

Actually I don't use it at all. I use the way imbrokeru taught me

In my opinion, the detail maps over the model diffuse map just aren't noticeable. Multipurpose maps are better.

obviously the talk of somebody who's read through every single one of my posts on these forums

Read the Forum Posting Guidelines
http://forum.halomaps.org/index.cfm%3Fpage=topic&topicID=27378

Do not post unnecessary images or spam a topic with rude and mean spirited images telling someone that the topic has “failed”.

Me and XlzQwerty1 helped him,good to see someone else tried though...

:D