I'd like to improve the normal map quality and modify the shaders a bit in order to get better lighting solution for the vehicles. You can barely even see specular highlights currently. In order to do this, I'd need the original heightmaps from which the normal maps are calculated, because if I start to work from the .vtf files the end result will have many artifacts and uneven surfaces. I'd only need some of them for start, like Bernodi Tank and it's wheels + tracks, so I can see how they turn out. If anybody knows who might have the original assets please let me know. And yes, I am very good at shader programming, I do it for freelance in addition to my day job.
Duke and Megel, but Duke has been long gone, and Megel is ... well he's reachable but that's only for most of the NF stuff. All I have to say is good luck.
What our modelers say is that we don't have heightmaps but you can ask them to reunwrap models to get height maps. Some of existing models have heightmaps in alpha channel of normal map. They are used in my material pack (http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=10383).
Alternatively, buy crazybump, it produces good normal from diffuse textures. http://developer.valvesoftware.com/w/images/6/6c/Test_bump.jpg
It may be good enough to make "nice" looking normal map but not height map. And you won't get precision required to use it in for example parallax occlusion mapping.
True, but if the goal is to improve the normal maps, then running crazybump over the diffuse textures will do so in many situations. You can't recover heightmaps from textures, although crazybump will have a go if you tell it to, it generates a wide range of good maps. If you want good heightmaps you need to either have the original 3d source, or you need to make them yourself, as with everything it requires more effort to get the best results, but good tools can do a lot of work for you and produce a good result with far less effort. There are quite a few heightmaps available for the default source textures, lostcoast in particular carries a number of them which could be used to good effect on other textures, and with some photoshop work, a lot of diffuse textures could be converted into passable heightmaps.
