Making Doom3 textures look less flat in Doom
Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 4:38 am
I mentioned this in the "what the hell" thread and a few people have asked me about it, so here goes. I use Paint Shop Pro for this so it is written from that perspective but any decent image editor should allow it. Some of the attached pix are in 256 colours to make them smaller but the image processing should be done in true colour as some of the functions need it.
The problem: Doom 3 has a lot of textures that people want to use but the Doom3 engine (as with many modern games) can do stuff with textures that older games can't. As a result, most of the Doom3 textures are actually very dull and flat looking. The Doom 3 engine adds the 3D appearance of them at run time.
The solution: Use some of the resources that the engine has to add at least a little more depth to the textures.
Here are the resources that you will find for most textures. These are actually for a model skin but textures are the same.
There is the basic texture:
Pretty flat and boring huh?
There is what I believe is called a normal map:
Weird looking things aren't they?
And there is also another texture which I think has something to do with brightness.
I don't always use that one, but it can come in handy.
The normal map needs to be darkened and grey scaled. Most should have an alpha layer with a mask in them so you might want to apply that first (PSP "Mask/Load from Alpha chanel...")
However, because you are going to be making the image very dark anyway, sometimes this doesn't really matter.
Anyway, once you have decided on that, the normal map needs to be greyscaled (PSP "Colors/Greyscale) and darkened. I usually use the gamma control (PSP Shift G) set to about 0.25 but different methods - eg brightness and contrast (PSP Shift B) can get good results. It's a bit trial and error. Anyway, you will end up with something like this:
Now you need to paste it over the main texture but do so with translucency. (In PSP, Ctrl-L pastes in a new layer then "Layers/Properties..." opens a dialogue that allows you to set opacity.) I find that around about 50% opacity works quite well a lot of the time but, again, a bit of trial and error is required.
Sometimes it is worth throwing the "brightness" texture into the mix too. It doesn't always look good but sometimes it does. Again, fiddling with translucency and brightness values to get it looking like you want is required.
So, here are the different versions as comparisons. First the original flat picture, then one with the normal map applied then finally one with the normal map and the brightness map.
Obviously it does change the colour of the texture slightly but this may, or may not be a problem and it can even look better. I know that the description sounds quite long but once you get into the swing of it, you can get an individual texture done in a matter of seconds.
The problem: Doom 3 has a lot of textures that people want to use but the Doom3 engine (as with many modern games) can do stuff with textures that older games can't. As a result, most of the Doom3 textures are actually very dull and flat looking. The Doom 3 engine adds the 3D appearance of them at run time.
The solution: Use some of the resources that the engine has to add at least a little more depth to the textures.
Here are the resources that you will find for most textures. These are actually for a model skin but textures are the same.
There is the basic texture:
Pretty flat and boring huh?
There is what I believe is called a normal map:
Weird looking things aren't they?
And there is also another texture which I think has something to do with brightness.
I don't always use that one, but it can come in handy.
The normal map needs to be darkened and grey scaled. Most should have an alpha layer with a mask in them so you might want to apply that first (PSP "Mask/Load from Alpha chanel...")
However, because you are going to be making the image very dark anyway, sometimes this doesn't really matter.
Anyway, once you have decided on that, the normal map needs to be greyscaled (PSP "Colors/Greyscale) and darkened. I usually use the gamma control (PSP Shift G) set to about 0.25 but different methods - eg brightness and contrast (PSP Shift B) can get good results. It's a bit trial and error. Anyway, you will end up with something like this:
Now you need to paste it over the main texture but do so with translucency. (In PSP, Ctrl-L pastes in a new layer then "Layers/Properties..." opens a dialogue that allows you to set opacity.) I find that around about 50% opacity works quite well a lot of the time but, again, a bit of trial and error is required.
Sometimes it is worth throwing the "brightness" texture into the mix too. It doesn't always look good but sometimes it does. Again, fiddling with translucency and brightness values to get it looking like you want is required.
So, here are the different versions as comparisons. First the original flat picture, then one with the normal map applied then finally one with the normal map and the brightness map.
Obviously it does change the colour of the texture slightly but this may, or may not be a problem and it can even look better. I know that the description sounds quite long but once you get into the swing of it, you can get an individual texture done in a matter of seconds.