Texturing in KF: What's possible?

[Vrav]

Hey all!

I'm learning about Unreal Ed 3 so as to mod Killing Floor, but understand the KF version of the engine is a little different. I've seen in the mapping tutorial mention of normal maps, but am quite confused when I go look at the texture properties of shaders and combiners - I don't see any actual normal maps. Unless this is just because the editor previews shaders rather than displaying actual texture images being used, and the monsters are actually using tangent space normal maps, what exactly is going on?

It seems to just be highlighting the brighter portions of the (beautifully painted) diffuse textures with environment mapping, masked for metal bits and such. But when I shine a flashlight on the monsters in the game, it's a convincing illusion, and I am led to believe there is some real normal mapping going on in there somewhere.

I've seen other shaders combine alpha, spec and self-illumination maps, but haven't seen any actual normal maps in any of the texture libraries, so I'm pretty confused. The preview of one of the cloaked stalker textures looks a lot like a lit normal map, but I just can't seem to view any of the actual texture files! So, as a newbie to the editor, I am looking for clarification - is it just a snazzy shader, or are we actually providing per-pixel lighting via highpoly-baked tangent space normals?

If it's just a trick, I'm content to bake down a diffuse and paint in highlights manually, the appearance of the shader on the models in-game has simply left myself confused.

Thanks in advance for any knowledgeable response.

 

[Murphy]

UnrealEngine 2 (or 2.5) does not support normal maps and Killing Floor did not add support for it.

Maybe you are looking at tutorials for UnrealEngine 3 because you got UnrealEd 3.0 mixed up with UnrealEngine 3? UnrealEd 3.0 is the editor for UnreaEngine 2. Confusing but true.

The fake normal maps you are describing could just be simple specular maps that blend an environment map (~cubemap) over a texture (either with a Shader or with a Combiner).
As the brightness of the highlights is not fixed like self-illumation or painted on highlights normally are, but look a bit different depending on the angle (because of the environment maps) it gives the impression of some sort of shiny 3d effect. One that is typically associated with normal maps.

Normal maps are something completely different, but UnrealEngine 2 doesn't support them so we have to work with what we got.

 

[Vrav]

Thankyou. No, the only thing I was confused about was whether KF added normal mapping. In the end of this mapping guide it talks about bump and normal maps. I figured it was just lying, and was right! Hooray~

I've sort of given up on the idea of modding KF at the moment, now that Torchlight's out. It's easier to mod. But perhaps I will come back, one day... thankyou again, Murphy! Take care.

 

[Murphy]

The article isn't really lying. It says KF fakes bump and normal mapping with shaders and he/she doesn't want to explain how at the moment. If you are interested in figuring it out yourself you can find examples of something that looks a bit like a normal map and something that looks a bit like a bump map where he/she points you to. I haven't checked out those shaders, but it seems about right.

Torchlight looks interesting to mod for. Have fun!