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From HalfLife 2 Knowledge Base

How-To Create Easy Normal Maps Using ZBrush

The following tutorial will explain to you how to make normal maps for HL2 using ZBrush (A very useful 3D painting tool.). The tutorial may work with ZBrush1, It has only been tested on ZBrush2, If you discover that it works on ZBrush1 please Email me at: StickFigs@comcast.net

Materials Needed

• ZBrush or ZBrush2

• The NormalMap_HL2.zmt Material for use with ZBrush (NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD, SORRY, I THINK THE PIXOLOGIC GUYS MIGHT HAVE THEIR OWN NORMAL MAP MATERIAL INCLUDED IN THEIR SOFTWARE NOW.)

• A program that can convert the file that ZBrush exports to a TGA for importing into HL2. (Ex. Photoshop)

Step 1: Paint your texture.

Open up ZBrush and create a new document (Make sure the size is a power of 2, for example 512x512.), start painting away with a normal brush and even put some 3d shapes on it. Make sure you only use the FastShader material to paint with because other textures create details like the NoiseBump textures do that won’t show up when you create the normal map. Just make sure you’re using the actual height map for details, not the material itself, you’ll see why later.

Fpr a basic texture, I used the FastShader material so I didn’t accidentally make the material produce the details, instead of the heightmap.

Step 2: Exporting your basic texture.

After you have your texture ready go up to the Render dropdown menu, open it, and change the rendering mode to “Flat”. After you do that the image should look unshaded and may just be a solid color, that is ok.

After you change the rendering mode to “Flat”, go up to the Document dropdown menu and “Export” it as the filetype of your choice, this file will be your base texture. I will call mine “crazybump_texture.bmp” (You’ll have to change this file to a Targa later with Photoshop or something).

Step 3: Creating your normal map.

Next we will create the normal map out of the painting you just made.

Go up to the Rendering dropdown menu again and switch the rendering mode back to “Preview”. Your image should look normal again. Go up to the Material dropdown menu and with the FastShader material selected press the load button and open the “NormalMap_HL2.zmt”. It should replace all the material you see on the canvas and create a normal map. Go to the Rendering dropdown menu and change the rendering mode to “Best”. Also, don’t forget to go up to the “Light” dropdown menu and change the “Ambient” light to 0. This is only important with the normal map, if you had ambient light set to something rather than 0 when exporting the basic texture you don’t need to worry.

Go to the Document dropdown menu and “Export” it as the filetype you wish. I named mine “crazybump_normalmap.bmp”.

Step 4: Importing to Half-Life 2.

Once you complete all the previous steps you need to convert your basic texture file and normalmap file to .TGA’s (Targa files.). You need a separate program like Photoshop to accomplish this.

Import your files into HL2 with your preferred method and then make sure you delete the VMT file for the normalmap VTF file. And then edit the VTM file of the basic texture VTF file to look something like this, you may add some other settings if you need to:

"LightmappedGeneric" { "$basetexture" "MaterialFolder/BasicTextureVTFname" "$bumpmap" "MaterialFolder/NormalMapVTFname" }

Fire up Hammer and create a simple cube or wall to apply the texture to. Render the map and it should look like it's normal mapped.

That’s it! You have learned how to create a normal map texture in 3 easy steps!

Send all comments and questions to: StickFigs@comcast.net

--StickFigs 11:00, 26 Nov 2004 (EST)