Skinning Questions

[WaywornMmmmm]

I've recently started skinning and have two questions.
1. Is there a way to tell exactly what bitmap is where on the map?
2. What exactly are bumpmaps and what can I achieve by editing them?

-Thanks

[grimdoomer]

1 skin it a solid color like red then look for it on the map.
2 bump maps are the gound like dirt grass. you draw it out with diftent layers then save it once you uplod it you will have dirt and grass etc where you want.

[theycallmechad]

2 bump maps are the gound like dirt grass. you draw it out with diftent layers then save it once you uplod it you will have dirt and grass etc where you want.

Sorry to say this, but that is not even slightly correct. Though I don't have time to go into it in depth, I will show you what they are and how they help textures.

I'm sorry for the qualith of the picture, but it shows fairly well what a bump map does. In this picture, I threw a grenade at the ground, with the detonation producing a light of sorts. If you look at the ground, you can see that it appears to have ridges and "bumps" that cast a shadow. The BSP, however, is 100% flat in this place. This is an effect called bump mapping that makes a surface such as this snowy ground here look as if it has bumps on it, even though it's really completely flat. The original bitmap, might I add, used to make this bump is 100% 2 dimensional as well.



Without bump mapping, textures look like wall paper. They lack an element of realism needed to make a convincing skin.

[WaywornMmmmm]

And bump maps are like this in the tag?:
blah_blah_bump

And how would I go about making something not have a shine/reflection?

-Thanks

[theycallmechad]

The easiest way? Shader swap. Find a shader that doesn't shine (maybe the concrete in Foundation or something) and use that shader instead of the current shiny shader.

And yes, it usually has "bump" attached to the bump tag.

[WaywornMmmmm]

Thanks. You've been a great help but...
How exactly do I find the shader that my bitmap is in?

-Thanks

[theycallmechad]

If you look in the shaders' tag in Dothalo, you will see a list of shaders. Click on a shader that you think may be the one (it usually has a similar name to the bitmap, but not always) and scroll through the bitmaps it uses in the dependencies/lone IDs box).

Do you know how to shader swap?

[WaywornMmmmm]

Well, kinda. I know you would find the thing you are skinning (lets use the smg) go to the weap tag and in the deppendency window, swap the shader. In my case, I am skinning the bsp so I don't really know where to look.

-Thanks

[theycallmechad]

You will find what you need in the SBSP tags. You will find that different areas of the BSP use different shaders (obviously), so you can skin each part of the BSP differently by applying different shaders to them. In your case, though, I would imagine you're wanting everything with the texture you want to replace to look the same. Find the name of that shader in the SBSP and replace it. In most cases, shaders are used multiple times, so make sure you swap that shader every time it appears.

[WaywornMmmmm]

I think I need the whole process explained. If I swap the shader with my bitmap in it, in the SBSP tag, wouldn't the bitmap change also?

-Thanks

[theycallmechad]

YEah, you skin the shader how you want it. Think of skinning maps more as editing shaders than injecting bitmaps. Each surface in the map has a shader applied to it. Look at the surface, figure out how you want it to look, and find a shader that will best work for you (if you want a shiny look, find a shiny shader and so on). Inject the shader you want into your map, inject the bitmap you have chosen in place of the shader's bitmap, and swap the old shader for your new shader. Everywhere you swap the old shader for the new shader will now look like the surface you created.

[WaywornMmmmm]

Well, what I did was duplicate a shader in my map, change its dependency to my bitmap, and then swaped that shader in the sbsp tag, but when I went to test it, it just showed the bitmap that used to be in that shader.

[theycallmechad]

Make sure you duplicate recursively. If you don't do a recursive duplicate, both shaders (the original and cloned) will use the same bitmap still.