Title literally says it:

Is there a way I can force gg to use the normal maps of a custom terrain?
I havent figured it out yet...

Does the terrain even recognise normal map textures?

Any advice on how to do that?

Hey there Duchenkuke

This be how I do it:
Create the diffuse\color texture with an alpha channel - controls shininess.
-- Save as png 32
Create the normal map
-- save as .dds using these settings:
---- Image Type: Normal Map: Tangent Space
---- dds Format: ARGB 32 bpp \ unsigned



May be a better way, but that method has worked best for me.

Hope that helps.

Also in cybernescents wip thread he has added some cool improvements for the terrain, but no idea if or when they will get added to GG

Reliquia....

Much appreciated! I will check that out and report later, when I am back from work..

hmm could you maybe send me your textures so I can see if there is a difference?
Doesnt seem to work for me, or maybe I missed something?

What isn't working exactly Duch?

The individual terrain textures from the texture resource folder are combined into a large texture atlas after they are selected in the editor and form part of Texture_D.dds and the normals in Texture_N.dds for a custom terrain. These two atlas textures are what the shader uses to apply to the terrain based on the mask that is painted in the editor view. They get loaded into levelbank\testmap on opening an FPM with a custom terrain and are saved in the FPM too. The normal file (Texture_N) is relatively huge (90Mb) as it has 16 individual normal tiles (4096x4096) at high resolution as (normals ( _N files ) are sensitive to compression artifacts.

As reliquia mentioned I've changed the GG shaders to also apply AO to terrain - this can be carried in the alpha channel of the normal texture so as to add no more textures or reads. It makes a marked visual improvement in all types of terrain rendering so would recommend this is adopted for main build at some point (does mean the existing textures would need to have AO maps added)

Cheers.

well, I did the changes, have proper normal and diffuse maps..

Tho I dont know how to create an alpha channel - I use paint.net for my texture stuff...
Maybe thats it?

The alpha channel is just the transparency of the diffuse.

You can get a plugin to alter transparency for paint.net from their site.

Or you can find a free tool called 'channel shuffle' - this lets you very easily add any image to the alpha/transparency channel. Actually it is a really great tool for merging any two images into one - channel by channel (2 X RGBA to RGBA).

Cheers.

Thank you! I will check that out and report later

I finally got it to work! Terrain finally looks great

Thanks again reliquia for your post!

Here see the difference:

With Normal Maps:

Without Normal Maps:

Cool, glad you got it sorted

Reliquia....

So it's just a diffuse with alpha, and a normal, both in png?

No specular?

What about naming method? (ie _D _N _colour _normal etc.)

The Diffuse doesnt even need to have an alpha, I didnt include one.^^ But a normal, yes.



No. The Diffuse needs to be 32bit png.
The Normal map needs to be .dds



yea just texture_D.png, texture_N.dds



I just named