Simulating "Bump mapping"

[Spacebuns]

Since Warcraft 3 came out before bump mapping was a thing, .mdx format accepts only flat textures. However, I'm looking at a way to circumvent this by creating a new texture that combines the diffuse map texture with the bump shading provided by the normal texture. But I don't know which tool lets me do this. Does anyone have an idea or know a tool that can accomplish this?

 

[GhostWolf]

That is literally not possible.
If you want the normal map to have any meaning, you need to have light information.
Having encoded normals gives you nothing in this context.
Actually you can probably do this sort of stuff in 3ds Max, given that you have the model, but it will essentially be the same as below - generating a light map and multiplying it with the diffuse (also known as baking).

Instead, what you can do is generate a light map, given some constant light, which would result in a black and white gradient, which you can then multiply with the diffuse map in any 2D authoring program (Photoshop, GIMP, etc.)
I don't think it will look good in WC3, but you can try.

Now, if you want something that you can give light information and it will spit said light map, without requiring the model, I don't think anything like that exists.
It's very simple to make, but I don't think anyone has any reasons to do this sort of thing.
Essentially you need to define a directional light (or multiple ones), and then just do the usual dot product between the per-pixel normals and the light direction.
You can probably write something for this in JavaScript in about 10 minutes (if you are interested, I might do it).

 

[Spacebuns]

I heard that in Photoshop CS6 you can load a 3D material as a layer and then apply textures on it like you would normally texture a 3D material. So the way I see it, it's possible to load a square-shaped mesh into the software then texture it. Is the method you mentioned similar to this?

 

[Ezekiel12]

You might like this thread?

 

[GhostWolf]

Whoops, made the tool in a web page, then I remembered that normal maps are generally encoded in tangent space, which makes them useless without spatial data (vertex positions).

So yeah, it's actually a useless demo, unless you have a world space normal map (if it's the usual blue-ish map, it's in tangent space), but if you want it either way, I attached the html file that you can open locally.
To use it, drag and drop your diffuse and normal maps to the left and center images, the result is shown to the right.
You can play with the light direction which will change the result.

 

[Spacebuns]

Thanks! It looks useful.

 

[A Void]

It's possible to fake bump mapping. But I will not say anything here, it will be my future tutorial.

 

[Spacebuns]

Why not just make it now?

 

[GhostWolf]

I am assuming he means a blended light map using a second set of texture coordinates, which is the same exact effect as what I described. Still, for any kind of baking, you will need the model geometry.

 

[Spacebuns]

Do you mean the geometry of the final model or just the geometry of the flat surface to map the textures on?

 

[GhostWolf]

The model. For any kind of per-pixel shading, you need per-pixel normals. You always need the model to get per-pixel normals, unless you have a world space normal map, which you will likely never have (no games that I know of use them, because tangent space can be compressed far better).