minning.de - Stefan Minning: CG Artist and Developer

Gen­er­a­tor is a sim­ple and free plug-​​in for Adobe After Effects which can be used to cre­ate nor­mal maps from alpha mattes, such as text and shape lay­ers.
It is based on some of the same algo­rithms as my more ver­sa­tile Celu­light plug-​​ins, but is com­par­a­tively sim­ple and offers none of the advanced cus­tomiza­tions its more feature-​​rich brother offers.

Gen­er­a­tor is designed to run in coop­er­a­tion with the free Nor­mal­ity re-​​lighting solu­tion to cre­ate shad­ing and light­ing effects for text and arbi­trary shapes with­out the need for pre-​​rendered 3D nor­mal passes.

Usage

When using Nor­mal­ity to add light­ing and shad­ing effects to motion graph­ics, some­times you’d wish there was a quick and easy way to cre­ate a nor­mal map from text or shapes instead of rely­ing on a com­plex 3D ren­derer… that’s where Gen­er­a­tor comes in!
Just drop this plug-​​in on your text, shape or any other layer with a clean alpha chan­nel and you will instantly see a nor­mal map based on the layer’s shape. Gen­er­a­tor is kept inten­tion­ally sim­ple with very few options and hence lit­tle room for error — in fact, there is only a sin­gle para­me­ter to adjust.

The auto­mat­i­cally gen­er­ated nor­mal map can be used by Nor­mal­ity to add shad­ing and light­ing effects even with­out a pre-​​rendered 3D nor­mal pass.
Note: Due to a bug in Nor­mal­ity, you must pre-​​compose your gen­er­ated nor­mal map before apply­ing Normality.

Download Generator Beta 0.2

Down­load
Gen­er­a­tor for After Effects is a free down­load for Microsoft Win­dows.

Donations

Devel­op­ing free soft­ware costs time and money. If you appre­ci­ate my work and use it in pro­duc­tion, please donate.
I will be more inclined to release cool stuff in the future if I see that my work is appreciated.

It’s been just a few months since I released Nor­mal­ity 3.0 for After Effects. Back then it was only known as a secret weapon in  the darker realms of the After Effects com­mu­nity.
Then Video Copi­lot came along and fea­tured Nor­mal­ity in their fan­tas­tic and in-​​depth tuto­r­ial, lead­ing to a mas­sive boost in the software’s pop­u­lar­ity and usage around the world.

Now, after sub­tract­ing the thou­sands of “ille­git­i­mate” down­loads dur­ing an attack on my site in Sep­tem­ber, I can proudly announce that Nor­mal­ity has offi­cially reached 50.000 downloads!

Nor­mal­ity Down­loads by OS

The chart shows  the dis­tri­b­u­tion between the Win­dows and OS X ver­sions, leav­ing the Mac all the way down at just 10%.

Nor­mal­ity Down­loads by Region

And, because I’m a fiend for sta­tis­tics, here’s the break­down by region. A cou­ple of sur­prises there in my opinion!

Any­way, this means there are (poten­tially) 50.000 users of my plug-​​in out there! I would def­i­nitely like to hear from you all about your expe­ri­ences with the soft­ware and the cool projects you are using it on.

I’d like to take this moment to clear up a cou­ple of com­mon mis­con­cep­tions about Nor­mal­ity that are being spread around many blogs and forums and are not only unhelp­ful but fac­tu­ally wrong.

1. Nor­mal­ity is not a copy of ZBornToy

   Far from it. While both plug-​​ins were devel­oped at roughly the same time with­out knowl­edge of each other, the first offi­cial release of Nor­mal­ity was in fact pub­lished more than half a year before ZBorn­Toy hit the scene in Octo­ber 2006.

   And whereas the fea­tures may seem sim­i­lar at a cur­sory glance, the plug-​​ins also serve quite dif­fer­ent pur­poses and address other pro­duc­tion needs.

2. Nor­mal­ity is not a free replace­ment for Youveelizer

   I’m not sure how this one started. Any­one tak­ing two min­utes to read the feature-​​lists will real­ize that not only do Nor­mal­ity and You­veel­izer not do the same thing, their fea­tures don’t even overlap.

   Yes, they are both plug-​​ins for Adobe After Effects, but that’s where the sim­i­lar­ity ends. (Tech­ni­cally You­veel­izer isn’t even a plug-​​in: It’s a Pixel Ben­der script, but that may be argu­ing semantics.)

   Any­way, You­veel­izer is designed to apply tex­tures or decals to pre-​​rendered objects and I highly rec­om­mend it if that’s what you are look­ing to do. Nor­mal­ity on the other hand is used to shade and light pre-​​rendered objects within After Effects and does not deal with tex­tures.
   Please don’t get the two mixed-​​up, they’re totally dif­fer­ent concepts.

3. Nor­mal­ity can’t replace a 3D renderer…

   … and it’s not designed to, either. But that doesn’t make it use­less! After mak­ing your­self famil­iar with Nor­mal­ity you can sim­ply choose on a shot-​​by-​​shot basis whether the trade-​​off between qual­ity and speed that the plug-​​in offers is Good Enough™ or whether your shot calls for all-​​out GI, FG, super-​​sampled ray-​​tracing with sub­sur­face scat­tered 4K dis­place­ment maps at the cost of poten­tially wait­ing hours just to see a lit­tle pre­view that does not reflect the final ren­der in any shape or form. With Nor­mal­ity, what you see is what you get, and that’s a plus to many users, even if it means deal­ing with some limitations.

   Stu­dio Lam­pion’s ani­mated short film A Night at the Cathe­dral was shaded entirely in Nor­mal­ity, show­ing that it is in fact a prac­ti­cal solu­tion if the look you’re aim­ing for allows for it and you under­stand what you can get away with and what is bet­ter left to a true 3D renderer.

   In the end Nor­mal­ity is just a tool — a free one at that. Use it if you feel it’s suited for the task at hand, just don’t expect it to work miracles.

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I hope this post will help to clear up these issues that have been nag­ging me wher­ever I come upon a pub­lic dis­cus­sion of Nor­mal­ity. With any luck it will pre­vent unin­formed and igno­rant com­ments from mis­lead­ing too many peo­ple who could poten­tially improve their work­flow using my free software.