The latest CS:GO update added normalmaps to 3 of the skins. Let’s see what difference
it has made to them.
Here’s the M4A1 Basilisk before and after. This is probably the best example of how it
can give the appearance of depth. The basilisk looks like he’s sticking out of the weapon
a bit! Here’s the Deagle Naga, before and after.
As well as appearing 3D, it also results in more contrast, making the older version appear
drab in comparison.
And here’s the Famas Djinn, before and after.
Notice how 3D they now look! But while they look 3D, the effect is entirely 2D.
This is the texture file for the FAMAS Jinn. And this is its normalmap. Notice how only
a few parts of the texture are affected- since it’s not all suited to the 3D effect. Despite
that, if I made a skin I’d probably get carried away and make it all into a mountain
range. And just like our eyes can see this as 3D,
so can the computer, interpreting the red, green and blue values in the normalmap as
3D coordinates, and lighting those that are facing towards light sources.
Somewhat confusingly, I recently did a video on de puiseau’s 3D-looking skins, so I feel
I have to say that his 3D effect is mostly achieved via… I guess you could call it
forced perspective. Normalmaps look 3D in a different way, and will only work on smaller
details, but will nicely interact with the lighting wherever you’re stood in any level.
When you see these before and after’s, it might look like some of the details have ‘jumped’
or shifted across the weapon model. They haven’t- it’s simply because one side of the details
is lit more brightly than the other, which gives the illusion that they’ve moved.
Normal maps sound like some amazing new technology that will revolutionise graphics in videogames
forever! But don’t get too excited because it’s already done that, back when it was
first introduced in 2004 in games such as Half Life 2.
It was brilliant for the computers at the time. They weren’t powerful enough to handle
complex 3D models. But normal maps did a good job of giving the illusion of there being
more detail than there actually was, and without requiring too much power to run it.
Today we probably do have the computational power to draw hugely detailed weapons. But
there’s a reason we don’t! And not just because normal maps are good enough already.
Before deciding on customisable weapon skins, the devs considered differently shaped weapon
parts, but decided that keeping the shape of the weapons was important so that they
could be quickly identified in gameplay. So in a way, normalmaps are the next best thing
if an artist wants to give the illusion that their weapon is a different shape. Either
that or de puiseau’s clever projected texture trickery.
There are still limitations to normal maps. Pac72 provided this lovely normal map example
over on Wikipedia. This shows the same 4 shapes, twice. On the left is the proper 3D version.
On the right are the flat, normalmapped ones. And it does a good job of demonstrating the
strengths and weaknesses of a normal map. The main difference is that it’s 2D, though
hopefully you’ve picked up on that fact already.
Without a normal map, there wouldn’t be anything visible on the right at all… so
obviously it’s better than nothing. You can see that while a normal map does a
good job of representing the direction and brightness of the lighting, it doesn’t cast
shadows like the cone on the left does, and the dark sides of the normal maps aren’t
lit up by surrounding scenery. Note how the dark side of the sphere on the left is lit
up by side of the… 4 sided pyramid thing, which isn’t something that normalmaps can
support. In fact, I think it’s only possible because
this example is raytraced, so even if the weapons in CS:GO were modelled in full 3D
I don’t think they’d look as convincing as the 3D shapes on the left here.
The additional normal map later can bring about some easter-eggs, too. On the M4A1-S
Basilisk I spotted this logo on the opposite side of the gun to the basilisk’s head.
This is a detail that exists only on the normalmap, meaning that it has never been seen by any
player with the skin until now.
Coloured lighting is the best way to see normal maps in my opinion. All 3 of these skins were
made by Gaunt. He has a 4th skin, the Glock Wrathys, already in the game and already featuring
a normal-map. I’m a little confused as to why this one was updated and the others weren’t,
considering they all came out years before normalmap support for CS:GO.
But then… does there need to be a reason? Valve moves in mysterious ways.
Out of curiosity I looked through the other skins with the same style of finish to see
if they had normalmaps. Weapons such as the AWP Worm God and Swag7 could easily support
it- but as great as normalmaps are… perhaps they don’t need it. Maybe it wouldn’t
suit their art-style as much as it does Gaunt’s, with his heavy, metallic finishes.
In other news, before this update if a drone self-destructed and landed on a player, they’d
get stuck in place until it broke, by which time they had probably been burnt alive. This
has been fixed in today’s update. Thanks to FaTAlyInSane for being one of the people
to provide a video example on the day the update came out.
Also, in my last video when I asked if you knew which voting exploits had been fixed,
it turns out a lot of you knew. If a vote was started to kick a cheater, they
could immediately change it to a vote map, making it impossible to kick them. Other comments
suggested that you could kick yourself by typing in a console command. And others of
you said it let you customise what the votekick said. And some of you said it was how one
team would start a vote to stop the other team from starting their own, meaning they
couldn’t pause the game if one of their players temporarily disconnected. So hopefully
it was one or more of these that was fixed. And the last update changes released today
were… these. The first is something to do with what information
you can see about your friends and what they’re playing if they’re online.
And the second is for the new EVENTS tab and how it loads or displays the most favourited
events for the month.
If you like normal maps (who doesn’t?) check out this other video of mine on them when
they first came out for CS:GO. And this one! And one on de puiseau’s 3D skin collection.
And this is video showcases the cutting edge features in the Source engine.