Comments on: CrazyBump or ShaderMap Pro

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:50:44 +0000

I did play with all the settings in both systems, and ShaderMap always came up with muddier results. It could very well be that it was the fact that the demo was limited in resolution, in which case my main recommendation to you is to ditch that limit, because it just gives the impression when trialling it that ShaderMap Pro’s results are inferior, which if they’re not then it’s underselling itself. Maybe you should just watermark or something instead?

In the end it was all moot for me because I ended up getting a free copy of PixPlant2, because it uses Ogre (which I wrote),and I’m very happy with its results.

By: Neil

Neil — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:38:00 +0000

It looks like you've got the specular level turned up really high on ShaderMap. You should probably decrease the brightness of your specular map. Also I'm guessing that you are using the demo version of SMP. This limits your preview resolution (and thus your detail). Here are some screens of ShaderMap Pro creating normal maps from stones. ShaderMap Stones with Diffuse. ShaderMap Stones without Diffuse. You can see ShaderMap is quite good at picking up the detail from images.

By: Dark Sylinc

Dark Sylinc — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:45:40 +0000

I’m going to suggest a free, open source alternative.
There is a GIMP normal map plugin
http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/~cocidius/normalmap/

It has a variety of different algorithms you can check, some producing higher or lower frequency normal maps.
It may not be ShaderMap or CrazyBump, but it’s worth the try.

By: Vectrex

Vectrex — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:03:33 +0000

Hehe, yes I’m exaggerating slightly, but yes crazybump with a good source image can produce nice results. Just be carefull of the temptation to normalmap things just because you can
I’m going to check out xNormal with 4 different lit source images. Much more work but potentially quite accurate.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:12:24 +0000

Wow, just had a look at the PixPlant website, and I must say the auto-tiling of textures looks really good too. I hate having to create tiling textures manually. This one impressed me the most.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:12:25 +0000

I’ve been suggested PixPlant2 as an alternative for $179. Apart from not generating AO maps (which I don’t need anyway), the quality seems on par with CrazyBump, and it has some extra features too for extracting repeating textures from images.

And, rather amusingly, I discovered it uses OGRE to render the previews!

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:58:05 +0000

*sigh* Yes, I’m a poor programmer. Actually, scratch that, I’m a poor *lazy* programmer If you want normal mapped stick figures, I’m your man, but anything beyond that is out of my depth.

The reason I’m liking CrazyBump is precisely because I think it’s *not* giving me plasticky results, whereas ShaderMap Pro seems to. And hey, if your artist likes it, I can’t be that much of a clueless programmer

By: Vectrex

Vectrex — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:00:43 +0000

I say both are the devil and to get a wacom and hand paint the heightmap! Run that through the nvidia normalmap generator and bam, a *real* normalmap. But I guess you’re going to pull out the ‘but I’m just a poor programmer’ card
I constantly fight with our artist because he loves crazybump and I hate the rubbery, plastic, not quite right results of all 2d to 3d generators. I think he loves it because it’s so damn easy, but he normalmaps *everything* including flat signs