i need a proper bumpmap tutorial.
i have photoshop cs6 and i alredy have made some good custom textures but i dont knwo hwo to make proper bumppams for them can anyone help? me out and show me how to do this or point me to a tutorial?

Here's what I know about making bump maps:

1. Make it

A bump map for HaloCE(sometimes HaloPC) can be made like so:
 I'm unsure of this, but your color mode always needs to be RGB 8-bit TIF if you're working with photoshop or GIMP.

 The height is determined in greyscale with darks being lows and whites being highs

 The alpha channel in a bump map determines the transparency of the base map in a .shader_envrionment(When alpha tested is checked). 
This is how the ladders in tutorial, Longest, Damnation, and the other maps are made

2. Compile it

After you run bitmaps(use bitmap if your gonna be testing in Sapien often!), 
you'll need to fill out the .bitmap tag that's created like so:
1. Set the format to 32-bit color
2. Set the usage to heightmap
 This will make TOOL convert it into a sort of normal map

 The bump height can be set from a scale of 0.0 to 1

3. ReCompile it

If you find that your bump map seems a bit fuzzy or rough, disable height map compression, and play with the detail fade factor

4. Test it

If the results don't seem right, try step 3 again

I created these bump maps and textures in Photoshop:


And the bump map used (The .psd is a 128x128 , because I needed to work pixel by pixel, and because I don't need a lot of detail for rocky tiles. This is the final,resized texture used ingame):

Edited by OrangeJuice on Mar 29, 2013 at 12:25 AM

YEAH THIS IS GOOD INFO!

thaks for this! I pritty much knew all this stuff but I didnt know exactly how the alpha tested worked so thanks for that.

but what I wana know is how can you get that perfect fade between your black and white lines and how did you get that perfect mix of gray and white in your boxes?

i found some other tut's but I want to beable to use my photoshop cs6 sute. and most of the tuts use gimp. witch im not to fond of.

I literally made it pixel-by-pixel, It used to be a 128x128 before I put it into halo

That tile is 4 sets of 4 squares(I divided 255 by 4 and stepped up to get to white: so the bottom squares were 0 black, 63.75, 127.5, 191.25, then 255 white)
(started with black, and made each new square 1/4th lighter and 1x1 pixel shorter till I got to white)

Then I filled the white squares with some noise and faded them so that it would be subtle :)



I'm sure you could just use the select/gradient for that though, my hands aren't that steady

Edited by OrangeJuice on Mar 29, 2013 at 03:53 AM

dud i have seen some good bumpmaping be4 and honistly with the fades and stright lines you made hear its liek the most perfect bumpmaping i have seen very impresive but im not realy following you on the numbers and other stuf f you are sayign do u think u could make a video?

also will bumpmaps work on scenary because i have the same shader on my bsp and on my bsp i can see the bump but on my scenary i cant and its quite annoying.

How's this?

amazing gif!
so after that you added noise? because your final image is not just white. i see a good mix between gray and white.
Edited by jackrabbit on Mar 30, 2013 at 04:21 AM

yup,

I selected only the white squares, added noise to them, blurred them a little, upped the brightness and made them low contrast, then I selected everything and resized it to 512x512 to get the overall smooth look :)

can also make 1 white square then apply gaussian blur to give you a falloff.

Crazybump program dose not work for me in windows 8.

aslo just one more question why wont it work on scenary ? do i need to re run radiosity or soemthing?
Edited by jackrabbit on Mar 30, 2013 at 06:55 PM

bump maps are for shader_environments only.
shader_model is used for scenery.

unless you are using OS, you can not have bumps on scenery.

I'm useing os does that meen I can just switch my scenary's
.shader model to .shader enviormnt? that easy?

also any way to render these bumpmaps in sapien?
Edited by jackrabbit on Mar 31, 2013 at 01:03 AM

Nope, sorry..

But since you're using os, I think you can use rasterizer_rt_display 3 to see how bump maps would look if they were shined upon. (rasterizer_rt_display 0 to get back out)

EDIT> Don't try that in sapien, it will crash!
Edited by OrangeJuice on Mar 31, 2013 at 01:30 AM

I have been trying to find a list of usefull sapien cammands. but all i can seem to find is dev cammands for inagame
for game testing I go in game to test alot and the more i dont have to the better.

do you happen to know the one to let me see dynamic scenary in sapien?

What did ya mean by that?

detail objects like grass?

emitters like fire, sparks, and plasma?

something else?

yes that stuff^

Open the scenery's shader_model tag in OS_guerilla, scroll down until you see "shader model extension", click Add, and just a little bit down you'll find a "base normal map" option. set it to your normal (not bump) map and set the coefficient to 1. Blammo, normal-mapped scenery!