Today I downloaded the texturing script for Photoshop called nDo2. It works in conjunction with Photoshop and can help generate normal, diffuse, Ambient Occlusion, and all that. I did a little experiment with an unprocessed photo in my personal library. I'd normally tweak images before attempting the creation of normal maps – This involves manipulating the grey-scale values on several adjustment layers and painting/adding and using the existing image to create a height map. Even explaining it takes long.
In nDo2 I picked from a list of typical texture types – "Sharp Brick" in this example. After that it took about a minute generating loads of layers in Photoshop to create a normal map – The default was pretty good, and guessed well for the specular and gloss even. Great! After it has the normal it can be adjusted and refined (working within Photoshop linking to the active file), a bit like you can in Crazy Bump (with a lot of copy & pasting). There was a little difference in quality between the two.
nDo on the left and Crazy Bump on the right. This is the preview after opening a plain old photo of a wall.
Also I tried converting the normal map into a diffuse – This actually worked out a lot of extra detail from all of its equations creating the other maps. Feeding this back over the diffuse and overlaying gave a much more interesting and rich texture. This would be handy for adding detail and variety to maps easily as a basis to work off. The whole process is so much easier, although I do have a moment of sitting around idle (was a large image to process). nDo2 is also prone to crashing – any cancellation of the process messes it right up – So experimenting can be time consuming. To compare the two isn't really fair – Crazy bump is a dinosaur in comparison, although is pretty quick and easy to pick up. Using the two and converting different maps between each other might be interesting, I did give it a go but I think Crazy Bump really needs a height/normal map to be of any real use. nDo2 cuts the height map process out somewhat, and there are loads of tricks I haven't even explored yet.
Here on the left I combined the diffuse generated from the normal map settings I had from nDo, on the right is the unprocessed photo . Noticed lots of the subtle detail is more apparent? Getting these selections manually would be improbable (I would probably paint it) and this is a nice quick way to acquire and customise detail, with the added bonus it will match great with the normal bump map.
When comparing the two you really have to consider the availability and pricing. They both have a free 30 trial, crazy bump for students is £30, nDo2 is £60(£48 on offer for Christmas). I have no problem paying £48 for nDo2 as it is worth it just for the few features I have used today. Creating normal maps can be a drag – You can project geometry within 3DS max, create & convert height maps in Photoshop etc, and project/bake from within 3DS Max, possibly importing from programs like Zbrush.
nDo 2 can be useful for all of these examples – Enhancing these maps and even creating pretty decent diffuses to start painting on. When you cut out the monotonous and time consuming processes everything flows a lot better. There are no short cuts for many processes, and you have to really know stuff before jumping ahead and not really understanding the fundamentals. For example I used the preset "sharp bricks" in nDo, but I'm aware of how to create my own presets and my learning so far will help a lot. On top of that I will have to be creative with the layers that are created still, I just now have more options thanks to nDo2 and more time to do other things.
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