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Instructor
Original Poster
#1 Old 14th Oct 2007 at 5:17 PM
Default Getting Bumped by Bump Maps
I have been trying to add a bump map to an outfit that doesnt have them to begin with.

I have tried every tutorial and mini-tutorial I can find, but can't seem to do what I am trying to achieve.

The outfit I have has three groups, (originaly 4):

body
alpha3
alpha5

There was a 'noblend' group as well, but I decided I didnt need it and removed it, it didnt cause a problem with my new mesh file.

Anyway, I have my partially completed outfit and mesh for it, but I want to add bump maps to all three groups, I just cant seem to get it to work.

Please can someone give me specific step by step instructions specific to this mesh/outfit, (attached), or just add the bump maps and send it back to me.

I would prefer to do it myself, as I can learn by doing, but if it's easier for someone to just do it than to sit there writing instructions for me to follow then I don't mind...

Please I hope someone can help me with this as all this bumping is hurting my head
Attached files:
File Type: rar  NEEDSBUMPS.rar (395.6 KB, 10 downloads) - View custom content

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
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Instructor
#2 Old 14th Oct 2007 at 7:49 PM
Did you tried this method? I believe I put enough details there.
Instructor
Original Poster
#3 Old 14th Oct 2007 at 8:58 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Jasana_BugBreeder
Did you tried this method? I believe I put enough details there.


No, I didnt come across that one, looks very promising though, thanks very much, I will give it a try

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
Instructor
Original Poster
#4 Old 14th Oct 2007 at 10:44 PM
Okay, I have tried this 4 times now, word for word. I tried three times with the package I am working on, and nothing worked apart from defaulting the mexh back to a random maxis.

So I tried it on a maxis mesh, unaltered, simply cloned in BS, then loaded into simpe, did exactly as the tut said, same result...

Am I missing something?

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
Alchemist
#5 Old 15th Oct 2007 at 12:40 AM
Does your graphics card support bumpmapping? Not all do.

If it doesn't, then you will not know whether what you made works or not.
There is a bump map tester object here. If you haven't tried it before, you can read about the tester, and download it at:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=43273

<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Instructor
Original Poster
#6 Old 15th Oct 2007 at 1:58 AM Last edited by FifthAce2007 : 15th Oct 2007 at 2:23 AM. Reason: Still can't spell
Quote: Originally posted by wes_h
Does your graphics card support bumpmapping? Not all do.

If it doesn't, then you will not know whether what you made works or not.
There is a bump map tester object here. If you haven't tried it before, you can read about the tester, and download it at:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=43273

<* Wes *>


Yes it definately supports bumpmapping. I have had some fun playing around with the bump-maps on meshes/packages that already have them I just cant add them to ones that don't

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
Instructor
#7 Old 15th Oct 2007 at 7:11 AM
Strange, because I use it relatively often, and it worked all the time :-|
Did the block 'Default NormalMap' appeared in Categorized Properties of your materials?
Tried to add them myself. Clothis uses proper mesh (it wasn't really nice of you to put it in Gym Clothes :-|), and bumpmap appeared - though it's more noticeable in shaded areas, probably because white color of texture.
I'm attaching package with my changes - compare it with yours, to see what you've missed. It's quite big, since I used 'heavy' bumpmap textures as tests.
Attached files:
File Type: rar  5fc197eb_NEWMESH001-BUMPED.rar (544.5 KB, 17 downloads) - View custom content
Instructor
Original Poster
#8 Old 15th Oct 2007 at 2:42 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Jasana_BugBreeder
Strange, because I use it relatively often, and it worked all the time :-|
Did the block 'Default NormalMap' appeared in Categorized Properties of your materials?
Tried to add them myself. Clothis uses proper mesh (it wasn't really nice of you to put it in Gym Clothes :-|), and bumpmap appeared - though it's more noticeable in shaded areas, probably because white color of texture.
I'm attaching package with my changes - compare it with yours, to see what you've missed. It's quite big, since I used 'heavy' bumpmap textures as tests.


lol sorry about the gym catagory. I use that for all my 'works in progress'. And yeh, when I tried it the ''Default NormalMap' block did appear.

I will have a look at your package and compare it with mine. I have no doubt that the process works, as I have seen plenty of packages out there with bumpmaps that are clearly from maxis packages that didnt have them, so it must work.

Thanks for taking the time to look at it for me, much appreciated

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
Instructor
Original Poster
#9 Old 15th Oct 2007 at 4:02 PM
Okay, I am showing my idiocy now, but I can't seem to find your package in BS. I downloaded it to the 'Downloads' folder, and tried using qxpress...

I am guessing it isnt as simple as that lol

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
Instructor
#10 Old 15th Oct 2007 at 5:48 PM
Opps, sorry to not mentioning it
I did not changed any instances, only renamed the package. Therefore, if you have both yours(old) and my(new) packages in Downloads, only one of them will appear in Bodyshop (which one is random, as far as I know). So, remove your old package first to see the changes in Bodyshop.
Instructor
Original Poster
#11 Old 15th Oct 2007 at 6:35 PM Last edited by FifthAce2007 : 15th Oct 2007 at 6:48 PM.
WOW that explains a lot, I was almost at the point of booting my computer, (not to be confused with re-booting lol)

It shows up now, interesting looking bump too, almost looks good enough as is

I did re-try your tutorial again, but refering to the modified file you posted, and it kind of worked.

After I made the changes needed, the mesh showed up in bodyshop afterwards, I think the first part of where I was going wrong, was in the filelist tab, where you add another file to reference the bump maps, it just said to select the existing file and click 'add'. Unless I read it wrong, it said to leave the one added at the top, and the name as it is, but in the file you sent me back, it has a different file name, and is in second instead of first.
However, it didnt show any bumpmaps.

This isnt a criticism, far from it, that tut got me further than I had up to that point, and it is quite possible I mis-read/mis-understood it. I must admit, why all these things work the way they do is beyond me, I can't understand it all, but I am pretty good at following instructions, if they are explicit to what I am doing, when it comes to having to modify a set of instructions to suit what I am doing, I get lost

You have my thanks again for sorting this.

Okay, scratch that about it still not showing the bumpmaps, I forgot to change the format to raw8bit when I imported replacement images

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
Instructor
#12 Old 15th Oct 2007 at 9:34 PM
Filelist tab is actually a bit tricky.
What you need to have there is 2 resource names - for base and normalmap textures (may be 3, if envcube map is turned on too).
For objects, these names must be the same as of textures used in TXMT; for clothes, they can be names of any Maxis textures. So, I just copied the name of bumpmap texture I mentioned in the 'short tutorial' post.
As for order - first normalmap, then base, or base, then normalmap - right now (more than year since writing that post, time sure flies fast) I'm not really sure which one is correct :-< most of the times it works with any order, sometimes textures get messed up if order is wrong. In this case, I just added 2nd texture without thinking, went to Bodyshop, saw it worked, and decided that as long as it works it better to not touch anything :D
Instructor
Original Poster
#13 Old 15th Oct 2007 at 10:41 PM
lol don't confuse me with the envcube, thats my next mission after this one

I have re-tried your tut, as I said, using the file you sent me for comparison. I started from just a basic clone of a maxis mesh, before I did any alterations to either the mesh or the textures.

I ended up with a file structure that was identical to the one you sent me, yet still no bump mapping in bs

Clearly I am doing something wrong, so I have started from scratch. I cloned the hula dress from BV, ( I needed it for the semi-transparentable alpha3 and alpha5), and made a new mesh file, edited the gmdc to what I wanted, replaced it yadda yadda yadda...

Confirmed it shows in BS with my new mesh, havent altered the textures yet.
I am now about to once again, try adding the bump maps to it, and see what happens this time

Again, thanks for bearing with me on this, I will get there

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
Instructor
Original Poster
#14 Old 15th Oct 2007 at 11:08 PM
OKay, well, getting somewhere

After my post above, I just tried that, worked perfectly.

(Jumps around the room dancing )

Right, with the first mesh I tried it on, the file name in 'filelist' was wrong, thats why it didnt work for me then, as for the last mesh I tried, dunno what happened there only thing I can think of is it just didnt like my mesh for adding bump maps, although I did check it with the number of, how did you put it?, 'non-zero normal groups', or something like that, and it equalled the number of subsets, still didnt work though.

Well, never mind, can't win them all I guess

At least I got it to work, even though it tool me like a to get there lol

Again, many many thanks for sticking with me on this :lovestruc

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
Lab Assistant
#15 Old 16th Oct 2007 at 12:54 AM
"Default normalmaps" does this mean Sims 2 supports normal mapping/shading?
Instructor
Original Poster
#16 Old 16th Oct 2007 at 10:12 AM
Yes it does.

Bump-mapping:

The process in which a '3-D' appearance can be given to a '2-D' texture.

Dependant on your graphics card being able to render bump-mapping.

Note: Just because a graphics card bump-maps in another game/program, doesnt necesarily mean it will in The Sims 2, it needs to be fully DX9.0c compliant with acompanying drivers...

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
Instructor
#17 Old 16th Oct 2007 at 1:34 PM
Quote: Originally posted by FifthAce2007
then, as for the last mesh I tried, dunno what happened there only thing I can think of is it just didnt like my mesh for adding bump maps, although I did check it with the number of, how did you put it?, 'non-zero normal groups', or something like that
The non-zero BumpMapNormal elements check isn't always helpful - I've seen some meshes which had it, but bumpmap didn't work. For your own mesh, simply make sure that you added bump maps:
- if you use smd - there's 'Create BumpMapNormals' checkbox when you import subset in SimPE - if you use Unimesh, you have to put comment to each group - 'HasTangentArray:', if I remember it correctly, better to check with Milkshape users
Quote: Originally posted by FifthAce2007
I cloned the hula dress from BV, ( I needed it for the semi-transparentable alpha3 and alpha5)
Just some notes...
For semi-transparentable alphas, you need appropriate Opacity set to subsets, and stdMatAlphaBlendMode set to blend in TXMT. It's not required that you clone some particular outfit.
And, though it's usually suggested to clone outfits with needed subset count (to avoid messing with package structure ), it's possible to add subsets to clothing. So, again, it's not necessary to clone particular outfit but it may take longer to adjust it.

I'm not certain why bumps didn't worked in one case, but worked in another, while mesh was the same Guess there's more to study about them.
Instructor
Original Poster
#18 Old 17th Oct 2007 at 1:52 AM
It is 'HasTangentArray:' in Milkshape, I was wondering what that was all about, as I see it in some subsets, (groups) but not others.

As for making a subset semi-transparent that isnt already, I think I will probably stick with cloning the maxis mesh I used this time, now I know it works for adding bump maps, I can create a base file that I can do pretty much whatever I want with.

Oh, you mentioned before something about the envcube? Hmmm, something I might look into, I have worked with them before when I built my Modenna Kitchen set, I wanted a high-sheen on the counters. I might see if I can adapt that to clothing meshes to try and achive a true velvet look to an outfit, instead of just trying to achieve the look with the texture alone. I have seen some others do that and it looks quite flat.

Although, saying that, I did try something similar earlier, and with a careful 'tweak' of the bump map image, it did almost appear to 'shine'...

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
Lab Assistant
#19 Old 17th Oct 2007 at 4:06 AM
Quote: Originally posted by FifthAce2007
Yes it does.

Bump-mapping:

The process in which a '3-D' appearance can be given to a '2-D' texture.

Dependant on your graphics card being able to render bump-mapping.

Note: Just because a graphics card bump-maps in another game/program, doesnt necesarily mean it will in The Sims 2, it needs to be fully DX9.0c compliant with acompanying drivers...


Actually normal mapping is different from bumpmapping. Bumpmapping provides height, normal maps provide normals. If your doing grey maps those are bump maps. If your doing funky red/blue/green maps, those are normal maps.
Alchemist
#20 Old 17th Oct 2007 at 4:46 AM
Quote: Originally posted by FifthAce2007
It is 'HasTangentArray:' in Milkshape, I was wondering what that was all about, as I see it in some subsets, (groups) but not others.


When you import a Sims 2 mesh with UniMesh, if the original group had a set of tangent normals, this comment is created. Because as you edit a mesh, these values would change, the tangent normals themselves are not imported, and anyway, MilkShape has no place to store them.

Tangent normals are a secondary set of normals that are 'tangent' to the mesh surface. A tangent is a line that would touch a circle at the outer edge at only one point. For bumpmapping the way the sims2 game engine does it, the tangent normal and the regular normal allow the direction of "up from the surface" to be calculated so that the normal can be modified in real time even when animation has moved the vertices around to make the bumps appear. Having the tangent normals precalculated helps a lot to make the game run faster, and if they are not present in the mesh the game will not use bumpmapping on that group, even if the texture material has bumps in it.

At export, the UniMesh exporter will calculate a new set of tangent normals that fit the edited mesh for any group that has the 'HasTangentArray:' comment in it. If you do not want to have something bumpmappable, leave the comment out, so that the output file will be smaller.

<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Instructor
Original Poster
#21 Old 17th Oct 2007 at 11:02 AM
Quote: Originally posted by ScoobyDoo
Actually normal mapping is different from bumpmapping. Bumpmapping provides height, normal maps provide normals. If your doing grey maps those are bump maps. If your doing funky red/blue/green maps, those are normal maps.


I stand corrected. I wasn't aware you could do the same thing using colour maps, guess you learn something new everyday

Wes, I must admit, all that is beyond me, and it amazes me how you lot figure this stuff out...

Jasana, is it possible to adapt this technique to add bump maps to objects?

I did try, but there were too many differences between a skin and an object.
I have already added an envcube to an object, and that all works ok, but I would like to finish the effect off with a bump map......

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
Instructor
#22 Old 17th Oct 2007 at 12:04 PM
Quote: Originally posted by ScoobyDoo
If your doing grey maps those are bump maps. If your doing funky red/blue/green maps, those are normal maps.
I know nothing about the 'real' normal maps, but...
It is OK to have non-grey texture as a bumpmp - for clothing, at least. In-game, it would work the same, or almost the same. The only [dis]advantage is that cloning of clothing with non-grey bumpmap will fail in Bodyshop - it is used by some creators to make "borrowing" of their textures harder.
Quote: Originally posted by FifthAce2007
Oh, you mentioned before something about the envcube?
You can add envcube, like on objects - but only to non-body subsets. And - not certain about it, because I never tried it, but seen somewhere - you might need to actually add envcube map to the package, not use an existing one - and if it's true, you'll need to give specific name to TXTR, similar to base and bump ones. And, sure thing, you'll need to add envcube texture name to FileList tab, but order is under question :-<
Instructor
Original Poster
#23 Old 17th Oct 2007 at 10:34 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Jasana_BugBreeder
You can add envcube, like on objects - but only to non-body subsets. And - not certain about it, because I never tried it, but seen somewhere - you might need to actually add envcube map to the package, not use an existing one - and if it's true, you'll need to give specific name to TXTR, similar to base and bump ones. And, sure thing, you'll need to add envcube texture name to FileList tab, but order is under question :-<


But is the reverse possible? Can you add a bump map to an object?

I know this is branching slightly off-topic here, but I am deadly curious

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
Alchemist
#24 Old 18th Oct 2007 at 3:01 AM
I do not know any reason that objects would not be able to be bumpmapped. some object or another has everything else in it that body meshes do, like morphs, joints and tangent normals.

The Venus Statue mesh has tangent normals. I thought it had a bumpmapped texture for the worn texture (pitted look), but as I write this I am not certain that the texture is actually bumpmapped.

I think the game textures may have had most bumpmapping for objects removed, perhaps for performance reasons. Bumpmaps seem to be the first thing that disappears when people have a less powerful graphics card.

<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Instructor
#25 Old 18th Oct 2007 at 6:36 AM
Quote: Originally posted by FifthAce2007
But is the reverse possible? Can you add a bump map to an object?
Yes of course, why not? If you had made the mesh bump-map enabled, of course the same way for any time of mesh.
The difference is in TXMT - in object, you are not restricted in TXTR name, but you must put the same names on FileList tab as are on Parameters tab.
However, Wes is right, most of Maxis objects have no bumpmaps - so you'll have to enable them by yourself. I don't remember about Venus statue, but I found that 'Vase on pedestal' has bumps
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