Applying and Creating Materials - Mastering Lumion 3D - page 98

Creating a normal map
The need to create a normal map has been mentioned throughout the chapter so
that we can add a bump effect to the surface. As mentioned earlier, we will not add
geometry, but instead provide information on how the light reacts with the surface.
The next screenshot shows the difference between the diffuse and normal maps:
How can we create this normal map? There are several commercial applications in
the market, such as CrazyBump and nDo2, that will create a normal map from any
diffuse texture. However, there is a free Photoshop script called nDo that is from the
same creator of nDo2, which despite having less functions, still produces good results.
To find more about this Photoshop script and how to
use it, visit http://www.philipk.net/ndo.html .
Before we finish this long chapter, let's have a look at some of the useful features
necessary to organize the materials we created with the Standard material.
Organizing materials
After producing some projects with Lumion, we will get to a point where some
materials are the same as those we used previously in another project. However, is
there any possibility to create our material library in Lumion? It is not possible to
create a library inside Lumion, but we can save the material and then later use it for
another project. Keep in mind that this will only work with Standard materials and
not the native Lumion materials.