mvit's Photoshop Techniques

[mvit]

Hey guys, I'll be posting some nice Photoshop techniques which you can use to quickly get nice results for your Brawl textures.
I'm going to post them all in this thread to keep it organized!

Baking from Normals Tutorial

The Theory
Smash 4 uses a more advanced light engine that Brawl's that instead of implementing normal coloring and pre-baked shadows uses normal maps for diffuse and normal coloring.

What this means for Brawl, however, is that when we import a Smash 4 model, we're going to get a plaster-like diffuse texture.


^{Ladies and Gentlemen I present to you Captain Plaster}
This means we'll get a washed out color texture that we can't really use.

So what then? We bake shadows!
Where are we going to get them from? Normal maps silly!

So, normal maps are a means to store shadow information so you no longer have to calculate it, it's smart stuff and makes your game look beautiful. It consists of three channels ( Red, Green, Blue) with a different directional light (X, Y, Z).



So if we split it...


Woaaaaaahhhh, three separate shadow maps!

We can bake these into out colors now!

The Guide
Let's open up the diffuse now... ugh, no wonder it looks like plaster...

Now, Brawl's texture favors a top-down light, this means, for the best results, apply the green channel to the diffuse and use an overlay or soft light filter, depends on you to choose which one.



Good! Now let's add a little bit of direction since you know the camera is going to show the side of the character. For this we apply the red layer!
Invert it and set it as a Multiply, since we're just changing the darkness value, not the brightness...
It will end up being a bit dark like so:



So let's use the level tool!



Now, we got directional lights!



But no self shadowing, some ambient occlusion might add to this effect, but I couldn't find it in the normal map at plain sight.... BUT, it turns out the developers at Namco decided to use the transparency channel from the textures as Ambient Occlusion ([censored] yea)

So let's grab that channel....

Multiply and level......

And boom, we've baked everything we need, lets go back to Captain Plaster now

DAMN, he's looking fine, look at him go!

All that is left now is just tweaking with the opacities and blend filters until you get the result you want, I've heard people say that some 3DS textures map well, try using those to compare to your texture's settings.
[/spolier]

More tutorials coming soon!

[KingJigglypuff]

+1 and a thread follow, you magnificent bastard.

The first time I tried this out, I didn't know to invert the Red, so I came out with this for ZSS.

But here's the result with the inverted Red.

Just wanting to show these to make sure I got it right.

[mvit]

+1 and a thread follow, you magnificent bastard.

The first time I tried this out, I didn't know to invert the Red, so I came out with this for ZSS.

But here's the result with the inverted Red.

Just wanting to show these to make sure I got it right.

You won't really know it's right until you look at the model with the texture, the reason I asked to invert the red is because you see the character from one of the sides, so you need to prefer one over the other, it's all trial and error once you get the concept of what a normal map is.

[KingJigglypuff]

So it doesn't matter if the Red is inverted or not? Just as long as it looks authentic? Is that what you're getting at? I'm not one to fiddle with textures, so excuse me if I sound like a noob at this.

[mvit]

So it doesn't matter if the Red is inverted or not? Just as long as it looks authentic? Is that what you're getting at? I'm not one to fiddle with textures, so excuse me if I sound like a noob at this.

Red will look correct no matter if inverted or not, it comes down to looking authentic, yes! Just make sure you know which side gets shown to the game camera to decide on the texture's shading.

[ShadowLuigi~NG~]

I'm using Photoshop CS6 and I get stuck right after splitting the channels. Sorry for being a bit lost.

[KingJigglypuff]

Copy and paste the individual split channels via Ctrl + A (Select All), Ctrl + C (Copy), and Ctrl + V (Paste) into the flat texture. That's how I do it.

[mvit]

I'm debating between two tutorials now, they're both incredibly useful and can help you do wonders with textures:
-The first is how to correctly apply patterns to models and have them look like they belong, for example applying a logo in Marth's Case with them.
-The other is an intro to gradient mapping which allows for super detailed metal-like recolors or whatever you'd please with them.

[DSX8]

yo mvit.... just out of curiosity.. how would this work with transparent textures? since laying them over the transparent diffuse texture removes its transparency.. soo how does one go around that issue?

[Dr.]

You can create a clipping mask, simply hold Alt(win)/Option(mac) then hover over the line between 2 layers, click when the cursosr changes. You can also select a layer and hit Ctrl+Alt+G/Alt+Cmd+G

Do this for every layer above your texture layer

[DSX8]

ah i didnt know that.. thanks Dr.!!

[KingJigglypuff]

Well since this thread is "up" again, I have an issue regarding the Normal map stuff.

With certain textures, it ends up glitching whenever I try bringing the split channels onto the texture.

What it's supposed to look like.

How it looks when I bring it in as a new layer.

Is there a fix or workaround for this?

[mvit]

Well since this thread is "up" again, I have an issue regarding the Normal map stuff.

With certain textures, it ends up glitching whenever I try bringing the split channels onto the texture.

What it's supposed to look like.

How it looks when I bring it in as a new layer.

Is there a fix or workaround for this?

Mind pm'ing me the images? I have a feeling that it's a transparency mask glitch or something similar but can't tell for sure.

Also! If anyone has Chrom's textures, send them to me! I want to use them for the gradient map tutorial!

[DSX8]

sure i got them, ill send them to ya soon

edit:
send it! also.. i know that the alpha layer in the normal maps is the spec.. but what r the red and green used for again? been trying to make a special shader that uses all 3 layers + rim lighting being applied

[mvit]

sure i got them, ill send them to ya soon

edit:
send it! also.. i know that the alpha layer in the normal maps is the spec.. but what r the red and green used for again? been trying to make a special shader that uses all 3 layers + rim lighting being applied

Alpha is Ambient Occlusion which is self illumination, it could work as spec.
Blue seems to be cavity maps, which you don't really need in smash.
Green seems to be shadow in the Y (Or Above to Below) direction.
Red is shadow in the X (East to West) direction.