Handpainting Normal Maps in Photoshop with Nick Lewis

[Music] hi my name is Nick Louis I've been asked by art Station to put together this tutorial that covers the process of hand painting normal maps in Photoshop I hand paint the normal maps I bring them into a 3d layer in Photoshop and it enables me to change the the lighting conditions and the surface properties of my paintings and my photographs and it's been really really handy and I've been playing around with this for the last couple of months so before I go with the process of hand painting normal maps creating 3d layers and stuff like that I thought I just covered the kind of effects that I've been getting by creating these normal maps and bringing them in I've got this photo of Frederick Douglass that I painted over the top of so it created this normal map here I created a 3d layer brought in the normal map and what that allowed me to do is to create a kind of 3d relief of Frederick Douglass and I can change the properties of this relief and I can also change the lighting conditions so with this directional light I can move where the light is where the direction of the light comes from I can also change the surface properties of the of this kind of metallic surface so I can make it more or less reflective I can make it more or less shiny as well and I can also change the blending mode so if I change to something like a hard light over the top of the photo it makes the photo look from metallic it makes the photo look more like it's like it's printed on on a kind of relief surface and the things like concepts I've put together this this little test of a Mac where I created a normal map that is lit with four different lights so I've got a fill light I've got a rim light in here as well or if I can just collect that sit and I can change the intensity of those lights so I can the intensity up and down I can also move these little point lights around where I can just change where they sit in the scene and it means that at any point in the process when I'm painting it I think well you know I'd like to change the way it's lit or I'd like to change the lighting direction I can do that which has just been really really helpful for those of you that are already familiar with normal Maps or how they used in a 3d workflow I'm going to quickly summarize how they work this is a normal map in Photoshop that I've put together the top left is going to be a sphere and the bottom right is going to be a kind of brick as you can see uses a very specific color palette so we've got green blue pink and light blue and these colors use to reflect light differently as it hits a 3d surface if I look at this normal map as applied to a 3d surface in Maya you can see that that sphere has really popped out as well as this brick and I can move a dynamic light around and it will reflect the light as if these are actually sticking out from the surface but if I turn the camera around and then move it slightly and I look at it from the side you can see that the surface is completely flat so that texture is what's making the light reflects in this way if we compare the original normal map in Photoshop with the way it's been applied in Maya you can see how the color is changing the way that the light is reflected so the green color here is reflecting light that's coming from the top the blue is reflecting the light that's coming from the bottom left the pink is reflecting their light that's coming from the bottom right and then this light blue is reflecting like this coming head-on to create this brick effect where it sticks out from the surface what I've done is I've color picked what I think is the angle of the surface that I want to paint directly from the sphere so just to give you a quick example this top edge here is roughly 45 degrees at the top and that would correspond with an area just up here on the sphere which would probably be about 45 degrees so I'm just going to hold down alt and color pick from there and so I just paint that in do the same on the right hand side for doing this angle here the same on the bottom here for doing this one and then the same on the left hand side here and that's how I just created those those edges to give you an idea of what's going on in my head when I'm color picking from the sphere and painting the normals in Photoshop I've come back into Maya to show how this is being imagined in 3d so when I color pick from the sphere I'm imagining that it is actually a 3d sphere and I'm color picking from the angle on the sphere that corresponds with the angle that I'm trying to paint so in this instance it was the top edge here and the angle I wanna paint is this top edge of the brick so I go in color pick from there and then I paint that top angle I was color picking from well on this instance from the left hand side and I paint on the left color pick on the right paint on that side and then from the bottom and each time when I'm trying to do is imagine that I'm touching on the point on the sphere where the angle corresponds with the angle of the surface that I'm trying to paint one of the simplest and best ways to demonstrate how this works is to put together a really simple mountain range which shouldn't take too long to do and I can just do it by color picking from a couple of different sections on the sphere I've created a new layer here and I'm just going to create a really basic shape here that's kind of rough mountainous and I figured that this side of the mountain is kind of facing a little bit to the left it roughly corresponds to this angle on the sphere so I'm going to color pick from there and I'm just gonna fill on the right hand side I'm gonna do the same I'm just gonna create a basic shape here and this surface is predominantly going to be facing the right-hand side and I'm just gonna fill there so for the purposes of this tutorial I've just spent this little section up where I've just been adding in a few bits of detail into the normal map so I've sped it up maybe a time two times three just to speed this little bit along okay so just completed that one I'm gonna save this off and we're going to save off the PNG and that'll be my normal map in there I'm going to create a new layer and I'm going to convert that to a 3d layer so we need to make sure of when you start is in your workspace you need to make sure it's in a 3d workspace so if you're not already in that workspace got a window workspace 3d and let's just get the layers up now if I go on the 3d tab down here on the bottom right I'm gonna create a 3d postcard that's usually the default there and I'm just going to click on create so if we go back into my layer I can now see that I've got a 3d legs it's got this little 3d cube that's indicated down here and I can't see anything and the reason for that is I don't have any lighting for going to my 3d tab I can see in here I've got my environment and scene and I've also got my mesh which is my postcard which is actually filling this layer although you can't see it and I've got this is my mash actually in layer 3 if I click on that I can just change a few of these properties and we can start seeing some results so I'm going to change the opacity by just removing that texture what it's done is it's picked up the fact that the layer that I first created had nothing in it and it's assumed that I wanted to make a completely transparent layer so I'm going to take away the default a pasty texture that it's created there I'm going to load in my normals so I'm going to load in the mountain normals in here and I'm gonna create a light so I can see what I've created so if I go into my environment I can see there's a little light bulb down here on the right hand side click on that new infinite light and there you can see the mountains have appeared in there that's my mountainside at the moment this is just grayscale because I've got no texture applied to these mountains at all and I've only got a white light in there so I can add in a couple of different things no I don't need shadow so when I click on my light I can select it any time in my 3d tab you'll see that shadow is ticked I don't need that because they don't actually have any true three-dimensional objects in here I'm just applying this texture to what it's calling a postcard which is just a flat mesh so I'm going to turn off shadow because sometimes that causes a couple of problems cause these stripes to appear on the screen and stuff like that I'm gonna add in an image based light which is indicated by this IBL up here if I go and click on the folder and if I go to low texture I can choose from a couple of HDR that I've got up here which I'm going to try out and I'll get some color from this image based light so this is one of the image based lights very subtle color in there I'm gonna try a different one and there's a few that I can change and they were all pretty subtle but that'll do fine I'm quite happy with that if I go to the infinite light again I can add in some color to this so if I wanted a yellow I can Dad in there and I can just up the intensity a little bit as well and I might create another light by creating a new infinite light in here just to balance things out a little bit so there's my blue in there so as you can see hopefully straight away within a couple of minutes I've created a really basic mountain range but I've created something where I can change the color palette and I can change the colors and lighting really really quickly by just shifting these around and just playing around with things like the image based lighting normal maps are not the only thing that we can apply in 3d layers we can also create diffuse and specular maps as well I'm going to create a quick diffuse map here just to create some strata on the surface of the mountains I've create this new layer I'm just going to rename it to diffuse I'm just gonna create some really really basic shapes in here again for this part I've just sped this up because you can see what I'm doing adding in the detail you don't necessarily need to see it real time so it's just sped up two to three times creating my diffuse layer here I'm going to cut out the bit that I need by just selecting the main part of my normal map here and go to select inverse delete the path the diffuse that I don't need and I can do a couple of things I can drag this over the top of my 3d layer here now you can't see anything because I haven't changed the blend mode but I can change that to something like an overlay or we'll just go through sort of soft light or something like that and then it appears like like a diffuse map in 3d wood so we're adding color over the top of that form that we've created with the normal map the other way we could also do that is by creating a diffuse texture so I'm just going to create one of those so is it texture if I going to defuse I'm going to load replace the texture which this one here and then that'll come in as the diffuse so you can do it either way I prefer the other way because you've got a bit more control over how it's going to appear I'd have to do quite a bit to this diffuse texture in order to change things what I can also do is ice mask off areas because you can see that in the diffuse this has come up purple because I've got some of the normal map background still in there if I just select this normal area you can see where my maintains are this section of mountains here just gonna select that section of mountains and I'm gonna mask off my 3d layer here so if we just click on the mask and now just mouse off which is quite handy I can turn that there I'm just gonna trim that out a little bit as well so I've masked off the sky part I'm just going to put in some blue a roughly blue sky in the background and just a bit of gradient anyway just for fun there's some painting and just painting over things sometime you don't have the functionality that you would normally have when you're painting because you're in the 3d workspace so sometimes you've got to pop back into the essentials or painting workspace in order to get things like gradients and stuff like that so as I said before what I prefer to do is although you can't load in the diffuse texture I prefer actually just a layer over a diffuse texture over the top and using a different you know then you've got some control over the blend modes and how that appears so I'm going to go back onto this I'm going to take away the diffuse texture on here and just remove that that means we can go back to this diffuse that we had before and I can make a few change to this we can change it so you can use overlay hard light soft light etc just to change the way that that is blending in with the the form of the maintains its underneath if at any point I'm not happy with the lighting or if I want to make some changes to it I can just go back into it and make little amendments to it here so I can just do a couple of things this one drop the angle of the light make it brighter and darker if I want to add the contrast or I can add in other lights as well so for going to my 3d tab again and click on that light I can add in something like a pot point light which will arrive here at the bottom right bottom left corner the thing I mentioned about the shadows causing problems you can see where it's right in line with the plane that it's lighting up so it's getting a little bit confused we're getting a little bit of what looks like a Zed fighting here we're getting stripes across the screen I turn off shadows that'll disappear and I'm just gonna pull it out ever so slightly so if we're correct this new point light it'll light absolutely everything up because there's no real fall off but I can add in a light fall-off by clicking light fall-off in here reducing the outer while the inner sighs right down and the outer as well so I can reduce that to bad there so the inner fall-off it starts to fall off using this inner circle or this inner sphere here until it's completely the lights completely fallen off and stopped emitting by the time it hits this actor sphere here that means oh and then I can just move this around so if I had like a beacon or something in the mountains I could add it in there if I wanted to so it's just a quick demonstration of the way you can use point lights and directional lights and add them into the scene as well as adding in a diffused layer as well apart from color picking and painting what you can also do is create more regular 3d objects by copying sections of the sphere and copying and pasting them and putting them together I'm going to demonstrate this by creating a basic ring I've got a template here which has all the surfaces of the ring that I need it's got a it's going to have a slight bevel on it it's got a side and inside and this outer surface here I'm going to copy and paste sections from the sphere in order to make up the normal map for this ring for that I need to use both a convex sphere which is the one that I've been using up until now the sphere that pokes out but also a concave sphere which is the opposite which is a sphere that that pushes in and I'll need that for the inner surface of the Ring so if I turn on this template I'm just going to quickly select areas the areas that I can need to copy and paste so from the convex fear I'm going to copy the the outer section I'm going to copy this bevel here so for that what I need to do is if I just copy this part of the sphere won't be quite right because the angle doesn't match the angle that this bevel is at the bevel that I currently have is closer to I'm gonna have to move it in order for this to work is pretty much should be around about here so I'm going to go to select transform selection gonna move this to a different area of the sphere one that more reflects or more closely reflects the the angle that this part of the the ring this bevel is at which is roughly there and I'm just going to move that there I'm going to copy from a convex fear it's fear control-c control-v it's going to move it back to where it was sure to see it appearing here here we go so I just want to make sure that's sitting in the right place yeah that's a roundabout there I'll do and so we've got the bevel in there we've got our outer edge which you can't see the moment is sat on top of the sphere but if I turn that off you can see that's that outer edge here we go I'm also going to take the side which is this one here just going to select that now instead of copying a section of the of the sphere I'm just going to color pick for this one because I just need to color pick because it's going to be flat I'm just going to color pick from the side of the sphere right about here that's roughly the angle that I'm after and I'm just gonna fill that so you can see him gradually building this up if I turn off the sphere there you can see I've got the general shape but just no inside and if I turn on this inner area here I'm gonna select that this is what I'm going to use the concave sphere for so just turn that visibility off for a second just going to use section of this part here now I need to transform the selection of this because actually I need to make sure that this area is showing that the curve of the inside of this ring will properly follow and go right up to the top and right up to the bottom all right down to the bottom you'll see what I mean in a second I'm gonna transform select this one again transform selection just going to scale it up copy that I'm just gonna and I'm gonna match it with the size but it was originally it's about there and now I'm going to turn that off so now I've got my my sphere just to go over a couple of few of the colors that going on here as I mentioned before the green is for surfaces that are pointing up the pink pinky purple is for pointing for surfaces that are pointing down the blue is more from the left hand side so as you can see the inside of the Ring here because this surface curls right round and over I need to make sure the color here was a kind of pinky purple color otherwise I wouldn't have looked quite right if I'd have copied it straight from the convex fear and not the concave on this would have been green and it would have meant that the inside would have looked like it was reflecting light upwards it would have looked inside out and looked very strange so that's why I've created that so I'm going to copy this save it to a new PNG of a ring just save over the original because I think this is maybe a little bit better I'm hoping I'm gonna create a new 3d layer so going into the 3d tab making sure you're in window workspace and 3d and I'm going to create a new 3d postcard if I use the Move tool and just click on that layer twice all the properties will come up or I can just simply click on the material under the mesh here in the 3d tab I'm gonna delete the opacity because it doesn't need any that's gonna go gray you may be that when you create them you don't get the opacity in there but if you can't see anything go in there and just have a look it may be the case that you've got completely see-through texture in there and now I'm gonna drop in the normal solo the texture in there and again I can't see anything until I add in a light so I'm going to click this new infinite light and that's where the ring shows up just as before I'm going to add in some image based lighting so if I just go to my environment in IBL here the folder just next to it we go to low texture I'm gonna go to my HDR's and just load in texture in there and you can see that it's catching the light properly and that's looking just about right and I can just move around my infinite light and change that as well I can make the material shiny or not I can just up the reflection so it looks super shiny oops just play around with those and I can also play around with the diffuse to make it look darker and lighter as well so that's how you create a more regular looking 3d object so there's very little color picking it's mainly in just copying pasting pasting sections of the sphere the last thing I wanted to go over with specular maps because there might be some areas of your painting that you want to be more shinier than others and some areas that you want to be more mad for this I've got a dress and a coat the dress I want to be more shiny the coat I want to be more matte and I've created a specular map for it so the lighter areas are going to be more shiny the darker areas are going to be more matte it's really really rough but it's just for demonstrating this idea I'm gonna go into my 3d layer and I'm going to find the material properties and I'll find them in there or again if you need to you can just keep clicking on your image and finally I'll get up my specular map here I'm gonna load in the texture that I created and you can see immediately that the code is quite shiny because I gave kind of a mid gray the the dress is very shiny because it's much much lighter near white and the but there's it really really pops out because the dress is clearly shinier than the coat and that's just basically down to the specular map where I've specified what I want to be math and what I want to be more shiny I can increase reflection as well using the sliders and change the shine on things so I do have extra control in there but it's just a really really handy way of making sure I allocate the right amount of specularity to the right areas of the painting just a bit of fun just to demonstrate how being able to light something differently in the same PSD can be really useful I created this cat doing some welding create a couple of different normal maps this is one of them this was when the flame is on I need an advisor to be down and his ears to be back there's another one where the ears are open and the visors up and what I did with that was I let it differently or let those normal Maps slightly differently very differently so this was the light coming in from the back and also from the front fairly even lighting with a little bit of contrast in the middle and then I changed the normal map and had no light from the back and a really bright glare from the front to give the impression that the welding torch has been switched fully on and then I just flipped between those two separate frames to create the animation of the the welding torch being switched on and and being turned off again so that we can see is visor flipping up and down as the torch is switched on and off and this was just the demonstrate how you can have dramatically different lighting using pretty much the same normal map which can be really really useful it's particularly useful if you've got clients who want to just try out different lighting additions or they might have made sort of changes to the lighting halfway through doing a paint or they just want to be able to change the materials as well and to see what those variations would look like then this was just a way of demonstrating that so that concludes the tutorial on hand painting normal Maps I hope you found it useful and thanks very much for watching

Channel: ArtStation

Views: 95,035

Keywords: Nick Lewis, Normal Maps, Concept Art, 3D Art, Photoshop, Tutorial, ArtStation

Id: D0tD0ZzOH4I

Length: 30min 11sec (1811 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2019