Tommyboys meshes, new releases.

[Podmark]

Hmm, very interesting...
Thanks for the heads up Tommy.

[tommyboy]

Tutorial on adding Bumpmaps via NifSkope:
http://tommyboymeshes.freedomforceforever.com/BumpmapTutorial.html

[yell0w_lantern]

Interesting. So can the max exporters do Bump mapping too? I wonder because sometimes it seems we can do more with the exporters than originally thought - like exporting dynamic lights with FF1 exporters.

[tommyboy]

Interesting. So can the max exporters do Bump mapping too? I wonder because sometimes it seems we can do more with the exporters than originally thought - like exporting dynamic lights with FF1 exporters.

Although the default FF exporter lets you export with "bump" ticked and a map in place, it doesn't actually export the mash with the bumpmapping in it. If there's a way of doing it, I haven't found it yet.
Maybe the niftools exporter might let you do it, or maybe theres some way with the ffv3r exporters, but to date the only way to bumpmap is to nifskope the bumpmap into the mesh, as far as I know.

[qazwsx]

Brilliant. Here's what I managed.
 
The "gaunlets" or whatever they're supposed to bloody be, have no ridges per the mesh, but part of the effect is due to courtnall's lovely texturing.
Can you "black out" sections of the map as with glow and reflect or does the entire mesh piece have to be bumped?

[Symon]

Like Tommyboy I'm pretty confident the standard exporters don't cover this. In fact the FF documentation claims that Bump maps aren't implemented. I've interpreted this as '...in the exporter'. Obviously not in the actual 4.0.0.2 format.

[tommyboy]

Brilliant. Here's what I managed.
 
The "gaunlets" or whatever they're supposed to bloody be, have no ridges per the mesh, but part of the effect is due to courtnall's lovely texturing.
Can you "black out" sections of the map as with glow and reflect or does the entire mesh piece have to be bumped?

Dunno is the honest answer, partly because I'm not sure what you are asking.
The way bumpmaps are supposed to work is that the "height" is determined by light and dark on the bumpmap, with lighter being "up", (I think) and darker being "down" (or vice versa), and grey being "normal" height. But because of the weird interaction between our bumpmaps and the reflect maps, I'd hazard a guess that if you have a black area on the _refl map, you would have no bumpmapping.
But if say you only want a ridge around an arm you would delineate that ridge with a very light and dark part then have the rest of the arm in grey.
There is a play-off between reflection(gloss) and these bump-maps, in that they aren't "true" bumpmaps, which are independent of gloss levels.

[qazwsx]

Gotcha mate, just realized how confusingly I phrased it- What I meant was that the mesh itself had no ridges, meaning the ridges in the pic are from bump mapping, which would make it a success. Well partially, since it's still not obvious enough especially when perpendicular. I'll try darkening/lightening it. The blacking out question was completely seperate, I was wondering whether each "editable mesh" had to be entirely bumped or sections could be "turned off" via blacking. As I understand it now, you would black the areas in _refl instead, or grey it in _bump. although how grey is a grey area?(pun intended).

Cheers

[tommyboy]

Gotcha mate, just realized how confusingly I phrased it- What I meant was that the mesh itself had no ridges, meaning the ridges in the pic are from bump mapping, which would make it a success. Well partially, since it's still not obvious enough especially when perpendicular. I'll try darkening/lightening it. The blacking out question was completely seperate, I was wondering whether each "editable mesh" had to be entirely bumped or sections could be "turned off" via blacking. As I understand it now, you would black the areas in _refl instead, or grey it in _bump. although how grey is a grey area?(pun intended).

Cheers

In most paint progs you get a colour select tool that has gradations between black and white. The grey in the middle I'd suggest as neutral height, but there is no 'right' or 'wrong', just what works and looks good, and I'm still finding that out myself.
Since you're an Xmen fan, I'd suggest starting with Colossus. All metal arms, clear ridges, as much gloss as you please, he's made for this. Judging by what I've seen with bumpmapped Iron Man mesh/skins, Petey should look awesome with bumps enabled.
In fact I'll do him myself tomorrow as it's getting late here.

[qazwsx]

Hmm, ok go right ahead, I wouldn't want to steal your idea. Is it just me, or does the bumpmap really tone down the gloss map? Even with 100% opacity, my meshes are only nearly as shiny as they were sans bumpity at less than 50%. I imagine that would pose quite the problem for the big russian. This is a pretty mental development for skinners though, now everone can make the meshes seem to be abit of their own. I'm gonna try and see if this can simulate fingers(a bit of an ask init)

[tommyboy]

Hmm, ok go right ahead, I wouldn't want to steal your idea. Is it just me, or does the bumpmap really tone down the gloss map? Even with 100% opacity, my meshes are only nearly as shiny as they were sans bumpity at less than 50%. I imagine that would pose quite the problem for the big russian. This is a pretty mental development for skinners though, now everone can make the meshes seem to be abit of their own. I'm gonna try and see if this can simulate fingers(a bit of an ask init)

The bumpmaps interact with the gloss(_refl) maps, in a way I don't quite understand.
What I do know:
No _refl (ie an all black refl texture)= No Bumps at all.
On some meshes the bumpmapping seems to enhance the shineyness, on others it can seem to tone it down. There are a lot of variables in the values you can use for either map, and values within the mesh itself that can be altered with nifskope which when altered will change the appearance. Also in FF, bumpmapping seems to add much gloss, but in ffv3r it tends to tone it right down.
I don't know what adding alpha layers to either or bothe _refl or _bump will do.
I did a test on Colossus, and it worked OK, but the bump-skin wasn't right for a really good effect, and since neither mesh nor skin are mine, I wont release or show it. Suffice to say it looked better with the bumpmapping than without. But could look better still.
It's very early days, and in many ways the game engine does not support it properly, as there are costs as well as benefits to it.
Trial and error is the only way forward.

[Valandar]

Have you tried using a Normal Map instead of a bump map in that channel?

[tommyboy]

Have you tried using a Normal Map instead of a bump map in that channel?

You've kind of lost me.
Partly because I only sort of know what I'm talking abut here, so bear with me whilst I try to define what I understand as those terms, and how I might possibly interpret the question.
Bump-map= a monochrome texture used to provide "height" in the rendering process.
Normal-map= a multi-channel texture where x,y, and z information is stored in the channels, and can have been derived from a more detailed version of the lower poly model it will be applied to.
I hope I've understood those correctly, one of the perils of being self-taught is the danger of missing some very basic information, or worse, misunderstanding it entirely, so if I'm wrong, please let me know.

So, in one answer to the question (I hope), I generally take a male_basic.tga and run it through the nvidia "normal map" filter in photoshop to generate what I then save as male_basic_bump.tga. I can grey-scale this and the result is the same, implying to me that the pseudo-bumpmapping is not fussy about the source.
If you meant have I chosen 'normal' rather than 'bump' to add to the mesh in nifskope, I don't think that I can do that. If that's possible I don't know how.
And of course the ff exporters wont export bumpmaps or normals, to the best of my knowledge.

But, and it's a big but, I'm really working from a position of ignorance, blind luck and guesswork here, and anyone more knowledgeable than I should step in and sort the wheat from the chaff.

[GogglesPizanno]

I'm gonna completely agree and sympathize with tommyboy (only with even less knowledge), I didn't think that the nif format (or the game engine itself) supported Normal Maps.

[GogglesPizanno]

So after doing a little playing around (and some posts about nif files on Morrowind forums) I think I may have figured out the "Shiny" issue with bumpmaps -- or else Im nuts)

Its a two step thing.

1. The Bump map texture is tied to alpha. So give the bump map texture an Alpha Channel. My tests were done just creating an all black alpha channel, then using a 50% grey one with the Thing Mesh by Tommyboy.
Black=No Shinyness
White= Full Shiny

2.  In Nifskope go to the NiTexturing>NiSourceTexture for the bump tga file and select it. In the options for the texture go to PixelLayout and set it to "Pix_Lay_Bumpmap"

And thats it.
I'll be curious if it works for others, or whether i am just crazy.

[Symon]

1. The Bump map texture is tied to alpha. So give the bump map texture an Alpha Channel. My tests were done just creating an all black alpha channel, then using a 50% grey one with the Thing Mesh by Tommyboy.
Black=No Shinyness
White= Full Shiny

VERY interesting. That makes them substantially more useful. I found when I played with this long ago that the benefit of the quasi-bump map was often negated by the inherent visual gloss effect. You sound like you have the answer.

[tommyboy]

So after doing a little playing around (and some posts about nif files on Morrowind forums) I think I may have figured out the "Shiny" issue with bumpmaps -- or else Im nuts)

Its a two step thing.

1. The Bump map texture is tied to alpha. So give the bump map texture an Alpha Channel. My tests were done just creating an all black alpha channel, then using a 50% grey one with the Thing Mesh by Tommyboy.
Black=No Shinyness
White= Full Shiny

2.  In Nifskope go to the NiTexturing>NiSourceTexture for the bump tga file and select it. In the options for the texture go to PixelLayout and set it to "Pix_Lay_Bumpmap"

And thats it.
I'll be curious if it works for others, or whether i am just crazy.

I played around with the various nifskope pixel layout options last night, including "pix_lay_bumpmap", but I cannot replicate a lack of shine following your instructions. Of course, I've messed around with so much in that mesh that its entirely possible thats the reason. So I'll rdownload my thing mesh again and start over.
I do hope that you are right, but it seems to me unlikely that if there was an option to have working non-shiny bumpmaps in either game that Irrational would have chosen not to use it, or that they would have been unaware of it.

[tommyboy]

So after doing a little playing around (and some posts about nif files on Morrowind forums) I think I may have figured out the "Shiny" issue with bumpmaps -- or else Im nuts)

Its a two step thing.

1. The Bump map texture is tied to alpha. So give the bump map texture an Alpha Channel. My tests were done just creating an all black alpha channel, then using a 50% grey one with the Thing Mesh by Tommyboy.
Black=No Shinyness
White= Full Shiny

2.  In Nifskope go to the NiTexturing>NiSourceTexture for the bump tga file and select it. In the options for the texture go to PixelLayout and set it to "Pix_Lay_Bumpmap"

And thats it.
I'll be curious if it works for others, or whether i am just crazy.

Nope, I downloaded the thing file that you are using, so we start in the same place.
Which is as in the pic below, a slightly shiny bumpmapped thing.


I change PixelLayout and set it to "Pix_Lay_Bumpmap" in nifskope and save, and get this:

A slightly shinier bumpmapped thing. I've set the _refl to all black, and added a black alpha layer to the bumpmap (and a white one, and one derived from the skin, and the results are all the same).
The change to Pix_lay_bumpmap does seem to free the bumpmapping from the need to have a _refl layer in order to show up, but I'm still seeing it as shiny, no matter my settings.
Any chance you could upload your altered mesh and skin for me to see?
It could be some difference in our respective hardware or directx files (I install lots of shaders and drivers and whatnot as I fiddle with various games). So I want to see if when I look at the files you look at, I get the same thing.

[qazwsx]

I've had similar results to tommy, Pix_Lay_Bumpmap seem to ignore the refl layer completely and bumps(lol) everything up to Max shinyness.

[tommyboy]

OH, I should probably specify that I've been looking at the mesh in Ctool, NOT Ctool2. I'll try playing with it in ctool2 now.

[tommyboy]

Hmmm...in ctool2, you still need something other than an all-black _refl layer, (even with the Pix_lay_bumpmap value set), or no bumpmap info is displayed.
This differs from Ctool, where pix_lay_bumpmap seems to sever the connection between _refl and _bump.
I don't know what that means or implies, but it's worth noting.
And since you have to have a _refl layer to see the bumps in ctool2, obviously they are still shiny rather than matt, as they should be in true bumpmapping.

[GogglesPizanno]

Strange.
I'll try and throw up the mesh and some screenshots when I get home from work tonight.

[AfghanAnt]

I've got an question about bumpmap (and it may be a stupid question but...): does adding this additional information to the model dramatically increase the size of the file?

[tommyboy]

I've got an question about bumpmap (and it may be a stupid question but...): does adding this additional information to the model dramatically increase the size of the file?

Not a stupid question at all.
By adding a bumpmap.tga, you are adding one more file to the skin. The size of that file is of course dependent on how much info you want in there, it could be 64x64 or 2048x2048, with or without an alpha layer etc. It's no different to adding a refl, or glow, or for that matter an _extras type map. Bear in mind that if you wanted to bumpmap all the bits on one of my meshes that use zemo_bits, strangefate_bits etc, you'd need to create an extra _bump texture for each of those. If it's just a male_basic mesh, only male_basic_bump.tga would be added.
As with all parts of a skin, the artist must decide to playoff the extra detail a larger filesize can give against the fact that massive textures have a cost in framerate for those without ninja computers.
Because bumpmapping tends to be about adding details not found in the actual mesh geometry, I tend towards using bumpmaps as big as the standard male_basic, ie 512x512, typically. But if it looks good with a smaller sized file, it doesn't have to be as big as the diffuse map.

[qazwsx]

I've got an question about bumpmap (and it may be a stupid question but...): does adding this additional information to the model dramatically increase the size of the file?

The information itself is around half of a kb each ;)

[GogglesPizanno]

So here is the thing with an alpha on the bump map set to all white:



And here is the thing with an alpha on the bump map set to all black:



This is the display in Ctool2. However, there is one caveat, in that unlike other skin changes where you can click away from the character and back again to get the updated skin, you actually have to close ctool and reopen it to see any of the alpha changes.

Also, Just to cover bases, when you add the alpha channel, the TGA needs to be saved in 32 bit not 24...

Here is tommyboys modified thing mesh I saved for comparison.
http://gpwarehouse.freedomforceforever.com/thing_bumpy_nogloss.rar

[tommyboy]

Thanks for uploading that, it's clarified it for me.
I was actually getting the same results but had mistaken your post to have read that you got rid of the glossiness and had functioning bumpmapping. Which is not what I'm seeing. I'm seeing what I got when I did it myself, that the black alpha layer makes both the gloss and the bumpiness go away. Which is all extra info.
I've been doing a bit of Oblivion Modding and meshing on the side, and since it uses nif files too, it may shed some light on what we are seeing. In Oblivion the mesh is exported with only a diffuse layer (the equivalent of just a male_basic.tga) set up in 3dsmax. No gloss or bumpmap is setup in Max. And that diffuse texture is stored in the 'textures' dir, along with another texture called "nameoftexture_n.dds" that is a bumpmap (or normal map, I still hardly know which is which) with the gloss/refl information stored in the alpha channel. Sounds familiar, does it not? The link twixt gloss and bumps, I mean.
As long as there is a correctly saved and named "_n.dds" texture the game engine automatically applies the bumps and gloss to the mesh. If you open up an oblivion .nif in nifskope, it tells you there is only a diffuse(or 'base') map, that there is no bump or gloss or glow setup within the file.
I throw this out there not because I know what it implies, but collectively or individually someone else might.

Back in Freedom force Land, we are still dealing with bumpmaps best suited to shiny/metallic type characters/objects, who typically will have only a 'standard' skin, as the bumps will only be aligned with that skin, at least in ctool. In-game, things may work out better for multiple skins/bumpmaps.

[Symon]

I've been doing a bit of Oblivion Modding and meshing on the side, and since it uses nif files too, it may shed some light on what we are seeing.

I haven't tried Oblivion. Keep telling myself I might if I see it in a bargain bin.
I hope it isn't as irritating with node-culling as Morrowind. I just love the way Morrowind reads up a gloss map and then (seemingly) discards it as useless!

[cmdrkoenig67]

In  :ffvstr: Blackjack seems to have a bump map.

Dana

[tommyboy]

In  :ffvstr: Blackjack seems to have a bump map.

Dana

Yes.
Yes he does.
There's also a "pat_park_fountain_water_bump.dds" indicating that at some point they thought or intended for bumpmapping to be included. I think some of the pre-game publicity mentioned it as one of the new features in the Gamebryo engine. I guess it never got implemented fully in the end...