EMBM Bump Maps

[General BlackDragon]

Okay, who is good at making them?

When I try, things look like they're covered in shrink wrap, and some areas of the normal texture get too bright.

Without Bumps:


With Bumps:


Skin:


Bump skin:

[Ded10c]

Anybody have a tutorial on them? Can't find one.

[jaydenbz2]

I'd say just custom make them with shapes have a base layer of 50% grey, then dark parts will low buts and white hight bits...EMBM bump maps are horrible anyway. It might be a waste using them.

I don't even think they react to live lights which is just stupid.

[General BlackDragon]

Jayden, that's exactly what I did.

I had to lighten the entire image which helped with the random glowing, but only a little bit.

[MrTwosheds]

EMBM bump maps are horrible anyway. It might be a waste using them.

This is the conclusion I came to. Much better to expend the effort on making the primary texture itself look bumpy, than waste s lot of effort trying to make bump maps that don't just look awful.
EMBM is not the modern type of bumpmaping that changes depending on how its viewed, it is no better than a highlight layer really.

[Zero Angel]

I've done some experiments on bump maps and have found out a few things about it.

1) Envmap.tga (in bumps.pak) controls the 'overlay' which is baked on top of textures using bump maps
2) By modifying the envmap.tga (and bump.blend setting) you can control how bump maps are rendered, more specifically the look of the texture when bump maps are baked onto them.

I've found a few settings which I think improve the look of the bump maps and i've created a few pictures to showcase the differences.

STOCK:
Using default envmap.tga
Using default blending mode (D3DTOP_4xmodulate)

Recycler - Facing Front
Recycler - Facing Side

MODIFIED TEXTURE ONLY
Using my modified envmap.tga with a noticably reduced contrast (source file)
Using default blending mode (D3DTOP_4xmodulate)

Recycler - Facing Front
Recycler - Facing Side

MODIFIED TEXTURE AND BLENDING MODE
Using my modified envmap.tga with a noticably reduced contrast and greatly increased brightness (source file)
Using blending mode 2 (D3DTOP_2xmodulate)

Recycler - Facing Front
Recycler - Facing Side

I prefer the modified texture+blending one because it increases vibrancy of the colors without saturating them too much.

Note: I've hotlinked the images because they're 1080p images. Middle click and use the tabs on your browser to compare.

[Zero Angel]

Accordingly, the envmap.tga file doesnt seem to be used by anything but bumpmaps -- so it should be safe to change.

I figure that modulate 2x stacks the luminance twice and modulate 4x stacks the luminance 4 times. So to avoid darkening the texture, the minimum color values on a texture using blend mode 1 (d3dtop_modulate) would need to be 255,255,255 -- and for blend mode 2 (d3dtop_2xmodulate) would need to be 128,128,128 or higher, and for the default blend mode (d3dtop_4xmodulate) would need to be 64,64,64 or higher.

Conclusion? Don't even bother trying to use blend mode 1 unless you want to only darken the texture.