I also used Awesome Bump to generate depth maps from the resulting normal maps. It also has a soften brush which was useful for blending where the edges of the selection lines were.Īnyway here are the resulting normal maps: After that I selected where I wanted some scale details and used the emboss tool. I could build up the depth of different parts of the goldfish using selection poly lines and the bevel tool. Although there are some extra plugins you can download for Laigter to help get a more custom look for your normal maps by adding textures and handpainting, I found SpriteIlluminator easier and nicer to use for that purpose, it also had an undo feature and selection tools which helped me. SpriteIlluminator can be used in a more custom way to make the normal map look exactly as you want it with editing tools and brushes. laigter generates a normal map automatically, the settings can be tweaked to get different looks for your sprites. I tried a program called Laigter and one called SpriteIlluminator to generate the normal maps needed for this experiment. 2D Light effectsĪfter some experimentation with depth maps, layer modes and gradient maps in Affinity Designer I created some nice effects that looked a bit like sub surface scattering. Opacity of this layer can be adjusted depending on the strength of the effect desired.Īlthough there is no highlight emission layer mode in most 2D software, I was curious if a similar effect could be faked using depth maps to create the “translucent” and “thickness” effect. The layer mode for the thickness map is set to highlight emission and this map goes below the normal map but above the translucent map. To get them to look like a sub surface scattering effect (SSS) the order they appear in the layer stack and the layer modes have to be adjusted. They look like this in 3D Coat: Translucency and Thickness map in 3D Coat The effect needs 2 light map types to be baked: a translucency map and a thickness map. For some context here is the “trick” on one of my 3D models- a frog. Sub Surface Scatteringīecause I’ve been trying out fake sub surface scattering effects in 3D Coat for some of my recent 3D models, I wondered if a similar trick could be done for 2D graphics by using depth maps as well. I’ll talk more about it later in the article. It is a great program for making normal maps for this very purpose as well as its intended use in 2D games with dynamic lighting. I recently revisited the normal map from 2D image technique with an experiment for a goldfish Illustration I’m working on and tried out a program called SpriteIlluminator. I wanted to add a few things I’ve been playing with to the mix. I’ve written a few things about this subject over the years and you will find quite a lot of information around the internet on lighting sprites with normal maps and doing things like making 3D models and displacement from depth / height maps. This article discusses some techniques to create height maps from 2D images which can be used to create sub surface scattering effects on 2D art.
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