Normal Mapping

[Strife]

Hey I did a search on the forums, but couldn't find an answer. I was just wondering if any of you knew if the Source Engine supports Normal Mapping (Note: Not Bump-mapping). I thought I remembered hearing about it, but I can't find any proof of it. Thanks.

 

[Mr.Reak]

Yes it will, I mean if you have DirectX6 based video card, you won't have bump-mapping.

 

[LoneDeranger]

Originally posted by Strife
Hey I did a search on the forums, but couldn't find an answer. I was just wondering if any of you knew if the Source Engine supports Normal Mapping (Note: Not Bump-mapping). I thought I remembered hearing about it, but I can't find any proof of it. Thanks.

Yeah, you don't need to use bump mapping unless you want to.

 

[noah]

lol!

I think Strife is referring to a more advanced form of bump mapping that uses a 24bit color image to simulate 3D triangle lighting normals on a pixel level to give a flat (polygonal) surface unique and varied lighting (via normal map texture). Red information in the texture is the x-axis. Green is 'y' and Blue is 'z'.

Bump mapping only provides z-axis lighting information with an 8bit image. Black pixels are low and white ones are high.

As to whether or not HL2 supports normal mapping...I have no idea. I would 'guess' yes, but it's probably a good question for VALVe.

 

[Hudson]

er..................wa?

 

[$niper]

Bump mapping = Z axis only.
Normal mapping = X, Y, Z axis.

 

[noah]

Normal map as in "texture used to fake polygon lighting normals on a per-pixel level".

Not normal mapping as in "ordinary, plain, or regular mapping".


This link offers a good explanation...
http://members.shaw.ca/jimht03/normal.html

 

[dscowboy]

It's available in DirectX, but I didn't see anything in this articlehttp://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2147
about it. Has anyone asked Valve?

 

[Strife]

Yea don't confuse Normal Mapping with Bumpmapping, as they are two different processes. Normal Mapping is a more advanced version of bumpmapping in some respects.

I know that the Source Engine has bumpmapping, and that it is used quite often, but I though I heard about normal mapping, though I can't seem to confirm this.

Doom3 and CryTek engines both have normal mapping (CryTek calls it PolyBump). Anyways, I e-mailed Valve, but no response, and that was awhile ago, just too busy I suppose.

If anyone has any info regarding this, please post.

 

[Dr.Sbaitso]

I have heard of normal mapping but couldnt understand it very well, does anyone have a picture showing the difference between normal and bump?

 

[Mr.Reak]

Originally posted by noah
Normal map as in "texture used to fake polygon lighting normals on a per-pixel level".

Not normal mapping as in "ordinary, plain, or regular mapping".


This link offers a good explanation...
http://members.shaw.ca/jimht03/normal.html

 

[McWarren]

Actually, Normal Mapping is a form of Bump Mapping, and the Bump Mapping you're referring to is actually 'Height Mapping', which is also Bump Mapping. Confused ?

Height maps - colour determines 'height' of each pixel from original surface, and light behaviour is calculated from that.

Normal maps - colour determines the orientation of each pixel.

Both are forms of bump mapping.

 

[Dr.Sbaitso]

Yes i have done some looking around and they said that Normal mapping first showed up in the second generation on games ala Quake and Unreal. So it has been around. I think you have normal and bump mapping mixed up. I believe it is the newer games such as HL2 and DoomIII and Halo 2 starting to utilize bump mapping alot. But then again i could be wrong

 

[Korgoth]

I always looked at height maps as a sort of displacement map, because you usually only use height maps when building terrain and displaceing the surface, and heighmaps actually change the poly count if im not mistakn where as normal mapping is "poly bump" like stated above, regular bump mapping on determines lighting on the z axis, i don't recall bump mapping in quake or unreal but i could be wrong (actually i don't even recal normal mapping in quake and unreal) I was on the assumption that normal mapping is a pretty new thing...?

 

[Dr.Sbaitso]

yeah i am probably pretty stupid this is waht i was looking at
http://members.shaw.ca/jimht03/normal.html

What the hell am i talking about yeah they talk about Normal mapping and show a good example of it in there, looks like the stuff in Doom 3

EDIT: Thats so wierd cause EVERYONE always refers to it as bump mapping when actually its not at all, is it? Thats why the people in Doom III look like they are made out of an assload of polygons.

 

[Direwolf]

Normal mapping is definitly a newer process thats starting to come into play only recently.
I've actually heard nothing about it in HL2, which doesn't mean it's not there. I do know that Tribes: Vengeance is incorporating it, for what thats worth.

 

[evillair]

I've emailed valve (sdk@...) about normal mapping but they didn't give me an answer (yet).

 

[Torsion]

Well I would speculate that HL2 does not use normal mapping because you would basically need to redraw every texture to scale back to a regular dx 6 map. Therefore, HL2 probably uses regular bumpmaps which are easier to scale back. This is why doom 3 needs dx 8 plus video cards to run because every surface is a normal map. I think thats how it works but I am not sure. mabee the engine is capable of using normal maps though. This would be a good question for a developer.

 

[Xtasy0]

Here is the answer it seems (#3).

Originally posted by P4boy
Just got this reply from Brian Jacobson clearing up the issue of 128mb vs 256mb graphics cards:

The game will run fine on a 128 MB card. Most of the benefits of the 256 MB cards you'll see we expect will be more long-term, received via updates over Steam:

1) Something which happens immediately, we're able to store more data on the card instead of in AGP memory, which you might think would be a perf win, but so far, we're not finding ourselves to be AGP bus-bandwidth limited.

2) We expect to release a local-specular solution, perhaps at ship, perhaps over Steam at some point, which is a major texture memory consumer. In addition, we've made it easy for major HW vendors to write new shaders for us to take advantage of the extra memory.

3) A *lot* of memory is consumed by normal maps, since they can't be compressed well. We may ship uncompressed normal maps for the 256 MB cards if it turns out to be a big enough visual improvement. Future updates (not to mention mods) will contain high-end content that use ever-larger amounts of normal maps.

so there we have it, source does support Normal Mapping.

that was taken from the official info from valve thread.