Image Designer Archive
Thread: Age slider
you need a good graphics card i cant see anything either with age change
-Biana
It works for me sometimes, and other times it doesn't. It really depends on then lighting and the person's skin color.
That would be because age is applied as a 'bump map'. Basically a 'texture' that denotes elevation difference in a surface. It's not that the actual surface is raised or lowered - it's that it fakes the appearance of raised and lowered portions by knowing where to shade and where to highlight.
If your lighting is very flat and plain, the bump map won't really show up (say, for example, the light is coming from behind you or behind the person you're working on.) If the light is coming strongly from a direction (say, directly overhead, or at a good angle to the person's facial surfaces, it will show up more.
And yes, some video cards don't support bump-map rendering. It may also be possible that there are settings in the video card's drivers that turn on or off bump mapping.
Also, remember. Bump maps are not perfect replicas of how lighting works in reality. You can see wrinkles on a person under most lighting in reality, but bump maps only really work well when the light is at a good angle. Example:
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If the light is coming straight on, there's no sides of the hills/valleys of the bump map to shadow or highlight.
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In the second example, you can see how the rays of light do not fall upon the indent until further down. This is what the bump map is trying to emulate. But if the light isn't at a good angle, it can't fake shadow. And since we don't have any depth perception in monitors, there's no way to see the wrinkles unless the lighting lines up right for the bump map to work.
That help some?
-V
Ack. Those little ascii images didn't work. Stupid HTML.
Here's another go at the second one, which was the one that was messed up...
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Richmond24 wrote:
Thanks for the information, ill have to check out my video card settings i guess. I have a geforce 4, with 64 megs or something, other than that id have to check out more details when im home. I know that i could not do anything in the game settings to get the age slider to work, so card settings are next.
Yes, the GeForce * TI cards do support bump mapping but the MX cards do not. Different chipsets there. I had a GeForce 2 MX for a while andI know that didn't support it. My 3 TI 200 did. And my ATI Radeon 9600 XT definitely does. The FX line is all new hardware and should quite definitely support bump mapping also, though if you're in the market for a video card, everything I've read says to stay away from the 5200s as being underpowered. ATI Radeon 9600 XT is probably the best price/performance ratio on the market today. Not the best card, but the most bang for the buck. Well, whatever. 
-V
Veldcath wrote:
Yes, the GeForce * TI cards do support bump mapping but the MX cards do not. Different chipsets there. I had a GeForce 2 MX for a while andI know that didn't support it. My 3 TI 200 did. And my ATI Radeon 9600 XT definitely does. The FX line is all new hardware and should quite definitely support bump mapping also, though if you're in the market for a video card, everything I've read says to stay away from the 5200s as being underpowered. ATI Radeon 9600 XT is probably the best price/performance ratio on the market today. Not the best card, but the most bang for the buck. Well, whatever.
-V
That's odd—I haven't had problems seeing the effects of the age slider with either of my video cards, a GeForce2 MX400 and a GeForce4 Ti4600. I have found that lighting plays a large role, as was mentioned, and in-game detail levels can have a lot to do with it, but it does show up on both cards.