How to smooth normalmaps

Hi everybody,

I was experimenting with MindTex and the demo of CrazyBump, and I’ve generated two normal maps:
This one was the Crazybump one:

And this was the render:


Then I switched to the MindTex program and I’ve generated this map:

which is really bad compared to the CrazyBump one: this is sharper and less good-looking
So I’ve played with the sliders and got this:

and I’ve applied to the same plane, but the result is still bad if we compare it to the CrazyBump one:

My question is: how can I get the same result? Have I misunderstood something with MindTex or it just has some settings which are messed up?

If I compare the two images, I can see that the CrazyBump image bricks point in a different way and these seem to point in the opposite one (it is really visible if you switch from one render to the other one with a program such as GIMP: layering them and then make the upper one invisible and visible again)…

Thanks a lot!!

Jymmy097

Hmmm. Just checked on the MindTex website: The “latest news” on that site are two years old… Is this developed any more? However, this is no issue of the textures being rough - they just seem to be incredibly low res. Can you export in higher resolutions?

Well, I’ve checked: the diffuse input texture is 700x700 pixels and the output is 700x700 pixels and the same for the CrazyBump map…

There is an option in MindTex which says: “Force the maps to the next power of 2” which generates a 1024x1024 texture…

Oh. I forgot to mention that for the MindTex render I’ve used, as the Diffuse image, the one created by it, but for CrazyBump I’ve used the original texture…

Thanks

Jymmy097

try with higher res and see what you get
may be 2 K

you have a lot of bricks and I think you need more pixels to get better results!

happy bl

Ya, “old”!!! go with someone developing. Even Crazybump stands where it was at years ago. Try Shadermap 2 for 40 bucks. Or a fast growing company like allegorithmic software!!!..has sale prices here and there!!

nDo2 is still the number one normal editor/generator in my book. Especially with the awesome normal sculpting tools in the new beta.

Actually you’ll get the best normals by baking actual geo!

Thanks for all your replies.
I’ve found another generator which is InsaneBump for GIMP: it generates a good-looking effect. See those renders:
This is with CrazyBump and the texture


This is with InsaneBump and the Diffuse texture created by it:


And this is with the original texture and the InsaneBump normal:


I think that the InsaneBump renderings are actually a little better than the CrazyBump ones… What do you think?

Another doubt: InsaneBump creates a bunch of normalmaps (highnormal, mediumnormal, lownormal, normal, ect.), what does they mean? Have I to merge them? If so, how can I do it?

Thanks a lot! You’ve been really helpful!!!

Jymmy097

you also need a good pic with nice light dark contrast
otherwise does not matter which soft u use !
seen a problem like that last week!

salut