Tips on how to make better looking Normals?

[Quillisia]

Is there anyway to use uncompressed without reducing the texture size?

I also tried changing the ini files but my map still looks horrific with DXT1 compression. Any ideas what I can do to help with this problem?

[danimal']

Well... for one that's not a normal map unless you're displaying only one channel of it? Looks more like that might be a bump map of some sorts? Compression isn't the same for different maps, there's a reason Normal maps have to have their own compression style. But regardless, don't use DXT1. Use: NormalMapBC5 if you still want to use compression.

Though the fact that NormalMapUncompressed cuts it in half really shouldn't make your normal map look bad tbh. But to answer your question, bake out your map at 2x the size you want, it's hard coded in and unfortunately in Native C so not something you can script your away around easily if at all.

Always search UDN:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/NormalMapFormats.html

[Quillisia]

That image is my normal map in the material editor with a 1 diffuse. Sorry I should have mentioned that.

I tried BC5 compression and my map gets transformed and scaled all over the place.



I will save out my stuff at 2k then and use Uncompressed. There were a few things that were not being picked up in the normal map at 512 that is why I wanted to keep my map at 1024.

Will using uncompressed take up the resources for a 2048 or 1024 map if I import a 2048 texture?

Thanks danimal'

[danimal']

I'm still confused, a normal map is RGB, what you posted is black and white. And when you say "1 in diffuse" I hope you don't mean you're plugging it into the Diffuse channel in the material editor... There's a normal map channel. As for compression and resource, read that link I provided, it'll answer the question. Long story short, uncompressed takes up significantly more resources. But I'd still recommend it while troubleshooting, test the compression alternatives after it works uncompressed.

[Quillisia]

Sorry for the confusion, my post was not structured very well.

My normal map is indeed in the normal slot in the material. I just had a constant with the value of 1 to make the material white. It showed the compression issue clearer.

Thanks for the help danimal'

[shinji246]

hey guys sorry if this thread is old, i need help on how to set my max in game LOD texture to 4096, i found some default files but changing the LOD ini didn't do anything within my package. Can someone point me to a clear tutorial please?

[danimal']

Edit the ini, then pay attention to what you're changing. If you're editing the SkyBox LOD group in the ini file to accept 4096, then you need to reimport your texture and chose the SkyBox LOD.