was experimenting with normal maps for a 2d sprite for a flipbook…
i cant seem to make it work.
they don’ seem to be affected by a moving light…
anyone have tried to do this?..
im 100% sure im doing it the wrong way…
i wanted to make a 2d sprite that has a normal map, that would be affected with dynamic lighting…
ex: shadows of the ship as it turns around the sun…
see attached images…
hmm, i guess not possible?..
what if i make it like a mesh… then the material for normal map…
like in tappy bird… it’s 2d in a mesh… but how do i do something like that?
That is the right way.
Flipbooks can’t have such masks due to them being constant changing textures etc.
What you can do is what Guilty Gear Xrd does; as you said, 3d mesh pretending to be 2d with the way camera and lighting used.
So you can use all normal maps etc.
hmm, so, how exactly did the sample tappy bird make the 2d image into a mesh…
If I remember correct, they are using 3dmeshes as wing and the chicken itself. Back then there was no Paper2D so.
Since flipping a wing up and down easy, they just made it in blueprint, as far as I remember.
i checked the tappybird project material and mesh.
it seems, the bird has 4 sprites in its atlas / texture…
i wonder how did they make it ‘animate’ from sprite 1 to the last sprite… like in paper2d…
really clueless as the material has no notes in it. and ive recently just started exploring materials in UE4…
You can attach normals to a sprite by creating a normals sprite sheet. then you can use unlit materials created for paper2d and attach the texture/normals in the proper slots and you’ll have normals with your sprites with proper light reflection.
I backed Game Design and Art: Sprite DLight
and this helps create 2d normal maps per sprite.
then I use TexturePacker - Create Sprite Sheets for your game!
to create an atlas with my sprite and normal.
this process is so that the normal map can be mapped exactly to the proper sprite and give the proper lighting reflection from the normal map.
The light being reflected off the sprite is not going to be that impressive unless the fore-ground/background have normals and or proper alpha texturing to represent the light being reflected but this should give you reflection off your sprite no problem.
edit: also to create shadows there are tricks to projected shadows from your sprite. I think a quick google of "projecting a shadow from sprite paper2d will yeild the result but I think the process was creating two sprites, one sprite has a specific setting but is invisible in game and the other sprite is a lit material version that does not cast shadows and you’ll get the effect you’re looking for.