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Hi all,

I'm not familiar with normal maps, could any of you explain to me how to create one?
And can it be created in paint shop pro?

Thanks, Nico.

Hi Nico,

You can download filter for photoshop from NVIDIA site. Wikipedia has good article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_map

Don't know about paint shop pro. Here is how the interface looks like for the photoshop filter:



regards,

I used the same nvidia plugin to create normal maps. My experimentation was very limited (I'll get back to it soon... hopefully).

I started with a arroway bump map and found that I had to perform a photoshop adjustment (I inverted the tones of the original image) to the bump before the plugin would create a correct normal map.

If I ran the bump image without the inverted tones it created an effect opposite of what I desired (areas that should deflect outward appeared to move inward).

I'll be interested to see what you find.

Also... a recent reading of the maxwell manual said something about bump values having no effect on normal maps. I also found that to be true in my brief experimentation.

Thank you for asking this question, Nico. I have same "problem"

I downloaded that plug-in some time before, but i did not have time to explore it and i do not understand its settings very much. Can somebody explain settings for converting "classical" grayscale bitmaps to normal map???

heres a nice link on normal maps aswell....

http://66.70.170.53/Ryan/nrmphoto/nrmphoto.html

hey, thanks guys!! digging in to it right mow