Bumpmaps

[AHadley]

There's been some talk over these recently, and I discovered them earlier this week... Tuesday, I think, on PB4a.

I think EMBM Bumpmapping is supposed to turn these on, but it never seems to work. I get them working by enabling bumps.pak in addon, even though GSH doesnt seem to like it

Once I've enabled them, the Scion units look real pretty... the blue parts become properly reflective. Properly, not just lighter, but a proper env-map reflection... which I was impressed with.

Noticed a couple of bugs with them though, possibly why they never worked properly. For a start, the cockpit fades in and out. Second, the ground tiles start to show textures one per tile rather than blended. And occasionally, the texture on Layer 0 seems to swap with a vehicle or building texture. Real odd stuff.

ISDF bumps dont seem to do much.


Anybody care to fill my knowledge in? Hopefully I can learn to do these textures properly too... and get them to work properly. 

[TheJamsh]

Bumpmaps have ALWAYS been buggy since day one, and they arn't really used as much. Not many graphics cards support them well either, which is why they were disabled in TA5.

If my memory serves me correctly, they are designed so that they give some extra 'depth' to the units, making the texture look more 3D, which is a good idea, but more modern methods do the job better (like normal maps etc etc, please don't read this as a feature resquest GSH ), and of course, they have better support.

Fixing them can't be done with the textures, but by changing code in the graphics engine. i kind of like the shiny look they gave when i first switched to PB4a, but everything was too shiny, and the graphics became VERY dodgy in some places. Textures would miss-apply etc...

You will probably find scion bump-maps look better because the glowskin is layered over the top again, which hide the ugly bits...

[Rocket]

For a start, the cockpit fades in and out. Second, the ground tiles start to show textures one per tile rather than blended. And occasionally, the texture on Layer 0 seems to swap with a vehicle or building texture. Real odd stuff.

YAY!  , you have just described a problem I've had for YEARS, I've never been able to figure it out! how do I stop what you just described?

[TheJamsh]

you cant. it just means youre graphics card doesnt support it properly. turn bumpmaps OFF.

[Rocket]

turn bumpmaps OFF.

there, thats what i was looking for, thanks. 

[AHadley]

I'll see if my ships support them, oddly my laptop does and appart from the bugs in first person view they look amazing... fewer problems in third person and very pretty skins...