Creating Photorealistic Materials sounds hard, but really there’s not much to it. Follow these steps to create a simple photorealistic material…
1.)
Set up a map for your texture to be in.
2.)
Get yourself a cool texture to materialize! Make sure it doesn’t have too much depth in it. You can use the one I’m using for this tutorial if you want, but it would be better if the texture is seamless. / Learn how to create seamless textures
BUT MAKE SURE THE FILE IS A BMP AND IN UT3 LENGTHS (256 x 256/ 512 x 512/ 1024 x 1024, etc…)
3.)
Download CrazyBump and Open it.
Once CrazyBump is running, click Open at the bottom left corner.
Then find your bmp image and open it.
The program will load its stuff for a few seconds.
It will come up with two images. Click either of them.
4.)
CrazyBump will create Normal and Specular Maps out of your texture.
You will see your texture as a spinning ball, slightly 3D because of those newly created maps.
In the preview box, click Ball then Box to beable to see it better.
5.)
If the material looks a bit wrong with the three-dimensionality of it, click Invert Shape Recognition
You can fiddle around with the intensity values of the normal map to create the perfect three dimensionality of the texture. It might take a few minutes to fiddle around and learn what each slider does.
Once the normal map is perfect, click the save button:
Then in the scroll down, click Save Normals to File…
Save the image in the same folder of your texture.
6.)
On the bottom toolbar, click Specularity
This will come up with the specularity map editor. The contrast and brightness are the ones to fiddle around the most.
Once the specularity is perfect, click the save button, and in the scroll down, click Save Specularity to File…
Save it in the folder of your texture and normal map.
7.)
Go back to the UT3 editor, and in the Generic Browser, click File – Import
Then find select your texture, Normal Map, and Specularity Map, and click Import
Where it says Package, find your map name.
Where it says Group, call it whatever you want as a group name!
Then click OK To All
8.)
Once your files have been Imported, right click a blank area in the Gen Browser, and click New Material.
Name your material, then click OK. Double click your new material.
9.)
Select your normal map in the Gen Browser, while also in the Material Editor.
Scroll down in the Material Expressions till you find Texture Sample.
Drag this across as this image shows.
Select your Specular map and do the same. Then do it for your plain texture.
10.)
Join them all up as this image shows:
Exit the material editor, and click yes to save all.
Save your map and Apply the material to a surface in your map.
