This is another of those 'quick and simple coloring tricks' that took waaay longer than painting colors directly. I'm still refining the process and the tools. Long story short, I'm drawing false-color normals for environment mapping. This was a clever fit for some metal statue-ification pictures which I then did not finish, and using it for softer lighting than mirror reflections has been a learning experience.
I'll release it when it's a bit more useful and a lot faster. Actual artists could do more with it than me.
It works almost the same way game rendering works. When the normalmaps are good and the environment probes are good, it just works. When they aren't... well, that's why this took a week to finish after the colors were done.
It works almost the same way game rendering works. When the normalmaps are good and the environment