Photoshop 2017: Bump, Normal, and Depth Maps

How Bump, Normal, and Depth Maps are created in Photoshop changed in 2017 CC. I hadn’t noticed until I needed to make a normal map. Then I stumbled across this video while checking to see if NVIDIA’s normal map tool would work with the newest 2017 CC.

The video uses the 3D mode. When creating mesh from bump map as shown PS isn’t exactly polygon efficient, but for use in PS and texture creation that isn’t an issue. For a 100+ brick wall PS made just under 500,000 vertices and 977,000 faces, which is way too heavy for Second Life(TM).

I’m playing with Photoshop’s 3D and deciding if I can use it for some of the things I want to make. My choices seem to be PS, Blender, and Sculptris… or to spend money… For work I have Adobe’s suite of apps. But, increasing my monthly software rental cost or spending US$800 or more for a 3D painting app isn’t something I want to do.

So, I’m painting in all three and trying to figure out how easily put fine detail into things I want to make for my Slink body.

What app do you use for making finely detailed textures for clothes in SL?

 

3 thoughts on “Photoshop 2017: Bump, Normal, and Depth Maps

  1. Hello,

    Did you try PixPlan? For long time I’m using it to generate my normal maps from my difuse ones. It’s very fast and very easy to set it up and it gives great maps. It also allow us to generate the Specular, Displacement and Difuse maps… as a add on you can use its “tiling” option to create seamless textures.

    About Specular map for SL (advanced materials) I suggest you to try to get your final colored texture, desaturate it to black and white and use it as Specular map… In my opinion this way results better than using any other specific Specular Map.

  2. Pingback: Week 3 Journal – My Journey of Animation

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