http://www.crazybump.com/

I just found this, haven't tried it yet, but... could be handy.

Bake AMAZING normal maps from 2D assets
Enhance normal maps, and blend different maps together
Bake displacement maps and cavity maps

Not new, but its a neat program. It works pretty well from my experience. Unfornutately, since the only source is a photo, odd shadowing can fuck it up royally. Its also commercial.

Still, its a cool app.

looks really helpful to me ... i just wanted to add normalmap files to my maps and started to make it by myself ... for only one texture i needet hours till it looked good ... maybe this tool was exacly what i searched for ...

Hm maybe not ... i just wanted to try that thing but i get a list of errors ... the funny thing is ... if i use the forum of the site to get solutions ... these solutions are bringing up a list of other errors ... looks like this tool dont want to work with me ... anyone here knows any other tool that can convert a bump-map to some normal map ?

lol doc , did you install net framework 2.0 and sdk for directx ?

it works perfectly on my pc

Based on torus' impression quite a while ago, it is an extremely effective program.

It's very effective for certain things. There are many situations where the lighting and shadow of the photograph messes it up, especially if it's low res. A frontlit relief, for example, will work very well, but the same relief lit from a steep angle will usually come out distorted.

you can move the light with your mouse

If you want interesting textures check out mapzone:http://www.mapzoneeditor.com/
There are some great templates in there to start with for procedural textures..

Ever thought about how non-Free this is?

Hope it never gets used for Nexuiz.

And don't even call it a "free tool" - it's a beta of what would become commercial, paid software (hence expirations)

Ever thought about how non free your computer is?

Hope it never gets used for Nexuiz.

It's ludicrous to expect every step of the creative process to be free and open source- that severely limits creativity. Anything generated with this program is the property of the artist, and therefore can be made GPL. It's nice that software like Blender is free for everyone, but it's not a prerequisite.

A reasonable criticism of the program would be that it doesn't work, or creates an inferior product.

Urbanshenkie wrote:you can move the light with your mouse

That doesn't change anything if there is a shadow in the original picture..

torus wrote:Anything generated with this program is the property of the artist, and therefore can be made GPL

That's not true for everything. There's this thing called, oh you know, terms of usage rights, that prevent 'commercial use', and it applies to most of these commercial 'free beer' programs

You can still make it GPL... we wouldn't care, as it wouldn't be US who violated the agreement. Only you are bound by the program's license... so you wouldn't violate the GPL, but you would violate the license of the software when doing that.

Now, when you use this to just make an externally downloadable map, the company wouldn't care for sure. If these files then later end up in some game, like Nexuiz, the company may suddenly start to get interested, and try to find out who used their software illegally. And as it is a bigger scale now, they may easily sue you for some hundred thousands. You don't want that, do you?

To prevent us from using it in Nexuiz, you'd need to write a clause in your texture's license that it can't be used commercially. But then it also can't be used with GPL stuff, as GPL allows commercial use (just makes it unprofitable).

leileilol wrote:

torus wrote:Anything generated with this program is the property of the artist, and therefore can be made GPL

That's not true for everything. There's this thing called, oh you know, terms of usage rights, that prevent 'commercial use', and it applies to most of these commercial 'free beer' programs

Perhaps. Nonetheless, those restrictions don't apply to Crazybump (the beta at least, probably not the final application either).

ryan (developer) wrote:You're welcome to use the beta for commercial work. Textures that you create belong to you. They aren't restricted at all.

http://crazybump.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=51&highlight=right