Simulated Bump-Mapping?

[megatog615]

Is it possible to fake bump/normal mapping with specular light and and a bump/normal map? You'd probably have to create one heck of a shader but is it possible?

[Silicone_Milk]

I don't understand this question completely.

I'm reading "is is possible to fake bump mapping with specular light and a bump map"

That's not really faking it. It's doing the real thing.

Not to mention that bump mapping is actually a "faking method" anyways since it simply displaces the normals of the object.

I think o'dium would be a good person to talk to about this though since he's pretty knowledgable in the ways of 3D art.

[dichtfux]

Question makes no sense, but you won't be able to make Quake 3 textures look bump-mapped with a shader, no.

[o'dium]

Actually, yes, he can.

Q3Map2 (Or something, its been a while with Q3 stuff) allows you to prebake the levels bump lighting from textures, so that they appear correct in the level. The downside is its not realtime, you cant change it when you get ingame, but it DOES work. I've played a couple of maps that got it working (Yes, in VQ3 with no mods) and its not half bad.

Obviously its never going to be as good as the real thing, but for Quake 3 its decent.

[o'dium]

Here we go:

EDIT: Bah, screen didn't work. Check the link below.

Not quite sure how its done, but read up on it at the Q3Map2 site:

http://shaderlab.com/q3map2/

[Kaz]

Yeah you just need to have a high number of lightmap samples at a low sample density for it to look half-way good.

[Detoeni]

see tutorial here :
http://detoeni.planetwolfenstein.gamespy.com/bump.htm

Works best in RTCW/ET as they use much bigger lightmaps Q3V.
If you want to use it on terrain in Q3V, this can be exported to an external lightmap which can be up to 1024x1024 and does give quite good results with a little hacking.

[dichtfux]

Impressive, didn't know that. Sorry megatog615, didn't mean to tell you wrong things.

Anyone got a link to a Q3A map that uses it?

[Grenader]

Strange. I tried the whole Q3A fake bumpmapping thing just a while ago. Apart from darkening the surface it didn't seem to do anything(Using the tutorial posted above).

Odin/Megatog, if you manage to get it working explain how?

[Kat]

see tutorial here :
http://detoeni.planetwolfenstein.gamespy.com/bump.htm

Works best in RTCW/ET as they use much bigger lightmaps Q3V.
If you want to use it on terrain in Q3V, this can be exported to an external lightmap which can be up to 1024x1024 and does give quite good results with a little hacking.

For the win

[megatog615]

Well I have been experimenting with alphaGen lightingSpecular and thought maybe it was possible to map a bumpmap texture and use lightingSpecular to cause it to look bumpmapped when it really isn't. Hence the "fake," since Q3A can't do per-pixel lighting.

[obsidian]

lightingSpecular is used on animated models, it creates the metallic effects on players and weapon models. It doesn't work very well for brushes or static models.

Static Q3Map2 "bumpmaps" will look decent with a high pixel density, but it is also pretty expensive on texture memory. Compensate by lowering lightmap pixel density on surfaces that aren't quite visible or further off.