Sprite Bump is an advanced 2D Normal Map Generation Tool. It takes in a single 2D image and generates a normal map and optional ambient occlusion map for use in 3D Lighting for realtime Game Engines ( Unreal Engine, Unity etc. ) Any engine that has access to the basic Pixel Shader pipeline can utilise Sprite Bump in its shading pipeline.
Introduction and Basic Functionality:
Authoring Ambient Occlusiona and Specularity Maps:
When you first load up Sprite Bump, the Project Wizard prompts you to Create Project. Click on that and fill in:
Folder - A new project directory that will be created for you
Image - Your starting input PNG image
Creating the new project will automatically generate for you a starting Normal Map and Ambient Occlusion Map.
Zoom Mouse wheel scroll
Pan Hold down Right Mouse and Drag
Light Position Hold down ALT + Drag
The Generate Normal Map mode is the main mode you work in during the editing and generation of Normal Maps. In the General mode, you first generate your base Normal Map with the following options:
Bevel Factor - The overall depth value to raise the non transparent portions of the image by. This will make the non transparent regions bulge out. The higher the value, the higher the bulge appearance.
Bevel Smooth - A smoothing factor on the bulged image. The higher the Bevel Factor, the higher this values should be to avoid sharp faceted looking effects.
Colour Factor - Adds bumps and insets for the fine colour details/variation on the image. The higher the value, the more pronounced the detailed bumps on the image are.
Colour Smooth - A smoothing factor on the applied bumps and insets of the colours of the image.
Smart Surface is a very powerful feature of the Normal Map Generation process. It will attempt to reconstruct the surface of the image based off colour and lighting conditions. In order to use Smart Surface, enable the Smart Surface Active check box.
You also have 2 more options to play with:
Light X Degrees The X Tilt of the perceived light in your image
Light Y Degrees The Y Tilt of the perceived light in your image
Without Smart Surface:
With Smart Surface:
Notice how much more pronounced and higher quality the various bumps/surfaces of the image are when Smart Surface is applied.
You can paint directly on Normal Maps. There are various ways to do painting. You can either paint directly on the surface, paint a texture pattern on top of it or blur the surface.
Depth - How much depth to apply during the painting process
Affect Radius - The interior circular region where the brush has absolute strength on the painted surface
Falloff Radius - Pixels within this ring will gradually falloff in terms of brush strength, allowing you to fade out the applied brush effect
Brush Strength - How strong the brush actually is. This value is multiplied by the depth to give you the overall brush strength
Depth - How much depth to apply during the painting process
Affect Radius - The interior circular region where the brush has absolute strength on the painted surface
Falloff Radius - Pixels within this ring will gradually falloff in terms of brush strength, allowing you to fade out the applied brush effect
Brush Strength - How strong the brush actually is. This value is multiplied by the depth to give you the overall brush strength
Set Texture - Sets an external PNG image file as your input brush texture
Blur Level - How much blur or smoothing is applied onto the painted region
Affect Radius - The interior circular region where the brush has absolute strength on the painted surface
Falloff Radius - Pixels within this ring will gradually falloff in terms of brush strength, allowing you to fade out the applied brush effect
Brush Strength - How strong the brush actually is. This value is multiplied by the depth to give you the overall brush strength
Ambient Occlusion is the process that tries to produce a simplified version of the Global Illumination effect. The end result is that your images will have much nicer self-shadowing effects and generally looks more realistic when used with a Physically Based Renderer.
You can view and generate Ambient Occlusion Maps in the ambient occlusion mode. There are a couple of options for Ambient Occlusion generation:
Num Rays - How accurate the occlusion generation is, the higher the value the more computationally intensive the generation process will be.
Max Occlusion - The lower the value, the more occlusion you will get. Try a value of 0.5 for lots of occlusion, or a value of 3 - 5 for less occlusion
Smooth - Smooths out the results of the occlusion
You can view your generated normal map in this mode.
Sprite Bump allows you to preview animation with your generated Normal Map using characters exported with the Creature Animation Tool.
In Creature, go into Animation mode, click on Export -> Game Engines and then proceed to export your character into JSON format.
In Sprite Bump, switch to Animation Preview mode and click on Load Creature Animation. Select the exported Creature JSON to preview the animation:
You can also record the animation as a series of sprite frames or video. Switch the the Record mode to do so.
After the frames are captured, the actual process of video encoding is done in the background, allowing you to continue working without interruption.