Bump Mapping

? Offline

Hey guys,

When I tried to import Freelancer’s asteroid meshes and textures
into Milkshape, I wondered why it created two texture files for only
one material and opened both textures. Knowing a little bit about
how bumpmaps look like, I got curious and decided to try and
delete the “Bt” tag included in the vanilla material. (
ast_fragments.mat ) Restarting FL, the asteroid now looked much
less realistic and generally more flat. The next logical step that
followed was to try and apply this technique to a custom model,
which I now did. Bad thing was: it didn’t work! The texture was
somehow fragmented and looked like somebody had scaled
down a 512x512 texture to 16x16. ( sorry I have not taken a
screenshot ). However, there had to be a way to accomplish this -
and luckily there was: I renamed my material from
Asteroid_frag90 to detailmap_frag90 and voila! it worked. The
texture looked way better than before. Anyway, here’s a short
tutorial: ( my first one )

1. Rename your material you want to “bump” to detailmap_<anything goes=“”>.
2. Export mesh and material to CMP/MAT formats.
3. Open the material with UTF editor and add four nodes as seen
on this screenshot.
4. Open your original texture and create a greyscale version of
this texture. Now import this one into the MIPS or MIP0 node of your new texture node.
5. Now change the data in the “Type” node to “DcDtBt”.
6. Enter the name of the texture node in the Bt_name node.
7. And enter this data in the Bt_flags node.
8. Test!

Conclusion:
Applying these “BumpMaps” or however you want to call them
gives your textures a lot of depth. It will need more system resources
but I think it’s worth that. I hope you liked the tutorial and could use
it, if you have any questions feel free to write here or PM me. Here
a few comparisons:

Vanilla FL asteroid:

http://bsgcrossroads.bs.funpic.de/tut/Vanilla.png

Custom asteroid:

http://bsgcrossroads.bs.funpic.de/tut/Asteroid.png

BSG Colonial Stealthstar:

http://bsgcrossroads.bs.funpic.de/tut/Stealthstar.png</anything>

? Offline

Fixed the pictures

Xarian_Prime

Umm… WOW!!.. this im just going to have to try

I wonder if it will work on .dfm files?..

Awesome discovery 8-)

? Offline

Thank you! I doubt it will work on dfms as you HAVE to rename the materials. Maybe there is another way, haven’t found one so far though.

Forsaken

Good job! Thanks for sharing.

w0dk4

Very interesting, nice!

FriendlyFire

As far as I know, detail maps are simply textures the game applies on a model in a random fashion. Good examples of such detail maps are planets (for instance, the city one).

It’s a nice discovery and I’m sure it can be put to good use, but I’m afraid it isn’t bump mapping.

? Offline

No randomness in sight, the result completely depends on how your greyscale texture looks. I’ve had it in bright grey and that one definately looks different to the one in dark grey.

w0dk4

It looks very much like bump mapping (or maybe its some sort of specular mapping? but since the texture also gets darker, i dont think so)…

FriendlyFire

I’m not sure. I know FL has an odd way of working with lighting (if you’ve ever taken a look at what can be done with envmapbasic.mat, you’ll know what I mean). Whatever the case, I do know “detail maps” are used to give details to planet textures by using smaller textures applied over the normal ones (hence increasing overall resolution).

? Offline

Whatever it is, it looks good.^^ “Power Mapping”

Azureus

I love this, wonder what it could be applied to, having this in my vanila update project would definately spruce up the game.

So if you have done any vanila objects, please share!

? Offline

I’m afraid I have only done the three models on my screenshots so far and I doubt I’ll be doing it on vanilla stations/ships. Asteroids maybe.

Azureus

Well, if you can provide a full and complete tutorial step by step, that would be awesome.

The game will appeal to more players if I can create an unofficial patch that includes some of these graphical updates along with a hell of a lot of other stuff the fantastic modders have come up with over the years!

? Offline

The tutorial in my initial post is a summary of everything you have to do. If you have any questions about this, just say where the problem is and I’ll help you as good as I can.

Azureus

Well, I was mainly looking for a more in-depth tutorial than a quick guide, if you have the time to write one, or anyone else who has this technique down.

It looks to me you are adding a layer of detail based on the shadows with the grayscale element of it.

Could that work with other types of image processing, such as psuedo-hdr in photoshop?

Thanks

? Offline

Well, a real tutorial requires a larger pool of experience. I posted this only day day after I discovered this and haven’t really worked on it since, I am however willing to write a tutorial once I’ve worked more on this topic. Give me one or two weeks and I’ll see what I can do.

Azureus

No problem, I understand.

You people just keep coming out with more awesome things I can add to my unofficial patch, things such as this may create problems for lower spec machines, but this is mainly an update to show off Freelancer to the people who are buying new games with higher spec machines.

If I can improve the detail, graphics, sound etc in any way possible without changing the main experiences, I welcome it, as I welcome the possibilities and potential of this technique.

SolCommand

There aren’t many ppl out there left with lower specs PCs so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Many upgraded their pc when Crysis came out so if they can play that game they could play any version of Freelancer that will ever see the light of the day

StarTrader

Izz veeeerrry naaaeeeiisss, goooood yob!