DescentBB

How do you bump-map in Photoshop CS2? I would like some decent tutorials. I know how to get the grayscaled effect, but that's not what I want. I want to see my textures bump mapped properly.

nVidia provides a plug-in for producing normal maps that is quite common.

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/phot ... ugins.html

The GIMP also has support for bump and normal mapping conversations based on texture.

I haven't actually tried to do a bump/normal map in Photoshop, given that it's a 2D application. However, I think you could do it by loading up a texture under Blending Options \\ Bevel and Emboss.

That'll only simulate it. I'm fairly sure you have to save shading layers separately to use them in a game.

In Photoshop, go to:

Window > Channels

This will bring up your channels pallete and you should see red green blue etc. Click the \"Create a new channel\" button. This will make a new channel and stick you into channel editing mode. Create a greysclae bumpmap here. You can copy and paste whatever it is you're working with from the layers area (Ctrl+A, then Ctrl+C on the layer, then Ctrl+V into the new Channel).

Once this is done, click back to your original layer. Go to Filter > Render > Lighting Effects. Set up the lighting as you wish, and make sure to select your Channel layer (probably called 'Alpha 1') in the Texture Channel dropdown box at the bottom.

The only problem with the PS bump effect as stated above is that the light has to come from a direction, and will nearly always mess up a seamless texture. I usually use GIMP due to the simple lighting.

Right, because in most real-time applications of normal mapping, the lighting gets determined on the fly. So you wouldn't necessarily want to bake in the direction. Honestly, the Gimp is surprisingly effective at this task.

Hmmm.... sounds like I will have to be careful how I create my textures for the GL. I'll probably have to create them in Photoshop and bump them in GIMP.