It technically does the same, but in addition you indeed get all the other features an image editor offers, including a texture tiler. Brushes are a bit primitive up to now, though. Anyway, it's just an offer.
Something else. I finally finished my exams and I can now catch up with dim3 again. Is it still Panther compatible or do I need to upgrade?
Macintosh HD Wrote:Is it still Panther compatible or do I need to upgrade?
You will have to upgrade to 10.5 to use Dim3.
No you won't. Look at the damn download page.
ggadwa Wrote:Bink Wrote:Macintosh HD Wrote:iMixPix has a filter that lets you make dot3 maps.
Anyone want to give it a go, maybe?
It's probably the same as the Dim3 Auto Generator. It can't ADD any detail to the normal map that's not in the texture. (How would that work anyway? lol) >_<
Yes, all those do exactly the same thing I'm doing (like that nVidia tool that gets passed around). All it does is try to determine light/dark values and basically makes a height map which becomes the dot3 product. It has height, but no left/right, top/bottom information.
This is why the auto-generated maps only give the impression of depth but a poor impression (in complex materials) of left/right, top/bottom movement.
Real bump maps are a complex thing, which is why some people have nice cars that work at Id 
[>] Brian
Lol Brian. You're right of course, normal maps have more detail and definition then bump maps do, and normal maps are also usually the norm for game development.
Bink Wrote:NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
NORMAL MAPS ARE BUMP MAPS
Damn. >_>
Wrong. The two terms are used to mean the same thing, but they are NOT the same thing. A bump map is a grayscale image used to indicate the height or "bump" of the surface. A normal map is a variation of bump mapping that specifies direction and form and height much better then standard grayscale images.
When you say bump mapping, you can mean both RGB and grayscale images, but normal map means ONLY RGB, and are a good deal better then grayscale. Bump mapping is the technology, but a bump map is the grayscale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping
Quote from above link:
"While bump mapping perturbs the existing normal (the way the surface is facing) of a model, normal mapping replaces the normal entirely. Like bump mapping, it is used to add details to shading without using more polygons. But where a bump map is usually calculated based on a single-channel (interpreted as grayscale) image, the source for the normals in normal mapping is usually a multichannel image (x, y and z channels) derived from a set of more detailed versions of the objects. The values of each channel usually represent the xyz coordinates of the normal in the point corresponding to that texel."
The terms are really interchangeable at this point; they are used by developers of all levels as interchangeable, and there are actually other terms. For our situation, they really are composed of the exact same thing -- normals for each pixel on the surface.
i.e., it's not worth a fight
The problem isn't the name, the problem is auto-generating them. When they are auto-generated, the normals only contain the height information. When they are generated from a model, it contains a true normal vector in all directions.
[>] Brian
Ok. Thanks for clarifying that.
Brian,
you can get some excellet textures for free here:
http://www.filterforge.com/filters/
All textures are at 512x512, and include same-sized normal maps, specular maps, and in some cases, diffuse maps.
I'm been getting textures from there for ages- some really great stuff. sometimes I wish it were higher resolution, but 512x512 isn't bad.