I would obviously like to learn to create displacement maps…is there a free to do that??
But most importantly I have a couple…how do I plug them into unreal…and sense they’re molding the texture to the model will the normal.map still be important??? or would it be unnessecary at that point??
Any help would be great. Im trying to learn more complex texturing.
Displacement Maps are an addition to the Normal map setup that allows you to create actual depth offset as opposed to the light angles that are created by a Normal map. You would still want to have a normal map, they are still the most efficient way to add a sense of depth to objects as they actual effect the way in which light is rendered across an object. Displacement maps can be tricky to use to try to match the effect of a normal map, because you need vertexes in order to get the offset displacement and this is where DX11’s tessellation comes into play. This sort of workflow though is not always efficient in a game environment, but in a limited capacity it can look really amazing.
Displacement maps are really nothing but Black and White gradient maps as well so you should be able to develop these using your normal texture generation methods.
Thank you ao much for your help. I see how they work and also how to wire them up in the material BP. Could you use the alpha from the normal and plug it into the world displacement? Would you get a similar effect?
I’m not sure what you mean…All I have is a diffuse a normal a specular and a glossy map…I was trying to create a displacement map or at least the effect…Is there a way I can create the displacement map?? Or like I said will plugging the alpha of the normal into the world displacement work??
I would always suggest developing your own displacement map in Photoshop which would be a greyscale map based on your normal. You can however take the Red and Green Channels from your Normal (which make up the Height info anyway) and add them together to get a height map then use that as the displacement map to LERP between you low and high values.
That sounds like EXACTLY what I need to do.
So I would add the green and red together out of the normal and plug it into the world displacement input??? Where does the LERP come into play??
So adding the green and red together. Plugging that into the alpha if a LERP and into the world displacement. …what else would be plugged into the lerp??? Anything? ??? Thank you so much for your help.