Insane Bump: A free Alternative to Crazy Bump

[omaremad]

I just discovered Crazy Bump two days ago and was amazed by the 30 day trial, however it costs allot of money to keep it for a long time. So i decided to make my own next-gen texture generator.

I made Insane Bump which makes:
-diffuse textures free from lighting
-good normal maps
-height maps
-specularity maps(2 types)

the results are packed int two RGBA textures
with a special shader i can also generate Ambient occlusion maps. It can work in batch or single files.

I made a comparison with pictures between Crazy bump and my insane bump.
http://irrlichtirc.g0dsoft.com/omaremad/insane.pdf
If you guys like it i can then proceed to make it user friendly and make installers.

[Halifax]

It definitely appeals to me. Also given the fact that it plugs in to GIMP is even better, because that is always part of my graphics pipeline. I would say keep up the good work omaremad!

[dlangdev]

Very nice. U da man, Omar!

Shukran Jazilan

[BlindSide]

Shukran Jazilan

Lol, Ramadan Mubarek, omar

[dlangdev]

Here's another one...

Omar, ya sheik, indak fulus katheer!

Yalla!, ro!

Mafi mushkila.

Maalesh.

LOL!

[JP]

That looks really good Omar, nice one! Your normal map looks much better than the crazy bump one, much more detailed!

[MasterGod]

That looks awesome! Good work.

[vermeer]

...I think is good that you make it. 'cause th eother alternatives: ORB, is dead since long, and not as easy to use, and a very good one, Xnormal , www.xnormal.net , is really nice but requires directx 9.0c and .NET framework installed, which several ppl don't like to have. Not a prob for me, but...

And even if werent so, the more , the merrier. Is not easy to get a good handle of the thing, so... and these tools seem to be constantly dying or going comercial...

I wasnt going to post, but then I thought wouldnt be fair to you, in case you are not aware.

[vermeer]

oh, and voted "Go".

[omaremad]

Thanks guys for the positive comments, I will program a windows version of the viewer and make a complete package.

Currently the upscaling is working fine but adds a border of a few pixels (Gimp scales up in integer sizes), does anyone know how to get the fractional part of a number in python? All the other upscaling scripts for gimp also suffer from this

Also i will have to learn how to make installers >_<.

Omar, ya sheik, indak fulus katheer!

Oh really?

@vermeer
Yeah xnormal used to be my favourite normal map tool(for mesh based normal maps) till blender got tangent bake. i decided to make this beacuse xnormal cant make crazy bump style maps and it doesnt batch process images. However for mesh based normal maps i think its the best interms of speed and quality.

[Dorth]

Maybe make it independent? An image format isn't that hard to manipulate, and if it was in your own app, you'd have the precision you desire ^^

[vermeer]

oh, focus quite in image based. That is, by photoshop and 2d work...very interesting... i sort of like more those workflows for certain detailing...

[vermeer]

actually, sounding really good.

[omaremad]

I ruined my linux 3D accleration by installer a new driver... so i got delayed a bit(not yet fixed ). Anyway i ported it to windows and made an installer. Im not 100% happy with my heightmap generation (i have a few more ideas to add) but i'll test release the installer on irc tommorow (just in case it doesnt work on other pc's and also so i can get interactive feedback on how thigs go).

Here are a few more examples, guess which one is normal mapped.

@Dorth
Im too lazy to code tons of filters and format read/writes , Im doing some of the processing in imagemagick which has 16 bit suppourt; maybe i can move some of the processes there.

[omaremad]

Ok here is the installer, follow the instructions carefully, dont just skip them. It has been tested on one other pc and it worked.

http://www.mediafire.com/?l63h9yxxott
Sorry about all the stuff you have to install, i didnt know it was this complex to get gimp-python working on windows.

To run it open gimp>xtns>python-fu>test>insane (it can be ran from command line too like most gimp batch scripts)

Here is a mini guide on the settings


I have provdied three test images they are in C:\insanebumptemp

wall.tga
rocks.tga <-lots of detail works good with defualt settings
brick.tga <-this is low res try and run with the upscale option


Currently increasing the large details option destroys finder details in the heightmap(thats something i have to fix), but i reccomend making it larger if there are large bumps in your image (occupy 50% of your image area) or smaller if the largest bumps in your image are quite small.

Smooth step is only half working.
I do not reccomend normal smoothing.

If your image is too dark (like a road) Insane bump wont see things properly, so i reccomend running a white balance filter on it(unfortunately this wasnt acesscible in gimps script interface).