Renderbumpflat and ASE models

(Shallow) #1

OK, this is slightly beyond the scope of just level editing but what the hey…

I’ve been trying to renderbumpflat an .ASE format model. I can get Doom 3 to spit out a normalmap fine, but it only renders a blank white diffusemap, before writing a bunch of console errors and shutting down.

From these errors it seemed to be a path problem in the ASE, but I’ve tried various texture path permutations and not found one that gets rid of the errors. The model’s textures are in the same mapobjects subfolder as the model, since I imagine everything is going to need to be there (or at least somewhere in base) for Doom 3 to find it.

So, I guess the question is, does anyone know if it is actually possible to render a diffuse map from an ASE? (and to render a normalmap from one without crashing Doom!)

(Davros) #2

doom doesnt need to find any textures to make a normal map using renderbumpflat so i would just ignore any path errors for now. also, doom uses the bitmap path instead of the material name when it finds the model shader (which is really annoying) so check thats correct using notepad or whatever. \Purgatory\Purgatory\Doom\base extures\base_trim\strim.tga (bitmap path in max) becomes textures\base_trim\strim for example.

the white diffuse is probably because your model was all white in max, so make your stuff a different colour and the colourmap that doom makes will be more useful then.

(Shallow) #3

Using relative bitmap paths was actually the very first thing I tried in all the mucking about with this that I did before I posted - it’s how I’d expect things to work. I’ll give it another go, it seems odd it didn’t work before… maybe I had a stupid path typo that I didn’t spot or wrong-handed slashes.

Based on what you’ve said about assigning colours to materials, am I right in thinking that Doom 3 isn’t going to render a diffuse map based on the textures I have assigned in my Max/ASE materials, whether it finds the textures or not? Probably easy enough to render the diffuse out of Max in that case, I just want a flat render with no shading for my diffuse after all!

Cheers for the help, I’ll let you know how I get on…

(Davros) #4

yeh the diffuse doom makes is based on the colours of the model, not sure how you do this in max though. so you’d make the main part of the model grey then make the surface detail a different colour so its easier to work with when you come to paint it properly

(Shallow) #5

Right, so the actual model colour as opposed to the material colour?

I don’t believe the data you get in an ASE file includes the model colour, which would explain a lot :frowning:

(rgoer) #6

Does anybody actually use the colormaps generated by Doom? Just paint a texture based on the renderbump normal output…

(Shallow) #7

My expectations for what I should be getting in a colormap were way off. I was hoping it would be something that actually could be used as the basis for a proper texture. That’s why I was concerned that I wasn’t getting anything.

Now that I know what I would be getting isn’t that useful anyway, using the normalmap as a guideline is a no-brainer :smiley:

(def46) #8

not sure how you do this in max though.

In Max you would select faces/polys from a mesh and set the Vertex color in the rollout panel, or use the Vertex Paint modifier, and you would right click in the Viewport > Properties > show Vertex Color and enable’shading’. Either way it’s slow but I suppose it can come in handy if you need to place details that don’t appear clearly on the normal map.

My expectations for what I should be getting in a colormap were way off. I was hoping it would be something that actually could be used as the basis for a proper texture

I think you could use the texture baking thing from 3DS Max, you can assign any material, bitmap or not, and render to a texture. I assume you dont have to use the rendered lightmaps and just get the diffuse information. See “How To Get a Multi-Textured Mesh into Doom 3” from video tutorials http://www.planetdoom.com/leveled/videotuts/brain/index.shtml (or search ‘Render to Texture’ in max user ref.)

Mind one advantage of renderbump is diffuse and normal maps have a ~8 pixel extended boundary to cater for texture seams and I assume for normal map image downsizing. But you could get that 8 pixel boundary in Photoshop by selecting the difference between renderbump’s normal map and a non-renderbump diffuse map.