How Many Of You Guys Do It This Way...

normalmapping you idyuts, what did you think i meant :)

i know that Blitz really isn't giving us the capabilities the dx9 capable 'engines' and languages allow, but if you are doing any of this stuff, how many people make both a super high poly model and a low poly one for their games...

up until i read this thread (over on the Beyond Virtual boards) i always just ran the textures through a normalmap generator... but this looks interesting enough to try out...

http://www.beyondvirtual.com/smf/index.php?topic=860.msg9237#msg9237



daaammmnnn that's a decent looking low poly end result model...

--Mike

Probably this is exactly the wrong way to do things for the average indie. It's upping the content requirements considerably, and as we all know... "Content. Is. Bad."

holy crap thats nice.

Yup,... that's the way to do proper normal maps.

My pipeline starts with a low-poly model,... then I up-res the model and add details. I use Z-brush for most of my high res mesh details.

Finally, I take and generate a normal map from the high-res model and apply it back to the original low-res model. That way all the details match up properly and you are ready to go with a high-res looking mesh.

For non-normal mapped stuff you can use a bit of this technique to create a detailed texture by baking in some details into a pre-lit texture map. This is what I would do for Blitz stuff.

Aren't you supposed to be working on a sub game or something? ;)

yeah... that's one of the crewmen...


:)

c'mon now... isn't it obvious that that's not my stuff...
right click on the pic and check the properties...

--Mike

knew it wasn't yours Mike.

Was tying to say "Shouldn't you be working on things other than chasing another next-gen engine?" but in a smart-@#$ way

oh... well then, in that case, yes... you're absolutely right...

:)

actually, i am working on it... i just have too many computers on at one time to be soley focused on just one thing... i'm browsing the net, coding some torque script (for that version of the sub thing), and coding the new lighting (for the Blitz version)...

here's today's progress so far... as far as the Blitz side of things go...






gotta get that lighting code workable for dawn, day, evening, and night... for above, and below the water...

also tweaking some of the subs rotational code as well...

so, ya see... i'm not just chasing around next gen engines all day, even though it may seem like it...

i just don't post everything i'm doing... i think i've already bored most of the crowd here enough for one week with the details of my undersea obsession... so i just post things that might be a lil more interesting...

... or controvertial :)

--Mike

oy you are not boring me at all - go ahead and show stuff :)

ontopic - yes that is the only way to get proper normal maps.
There are tools that just calculate a normal map on behalf of a colormap supplied but 1) that the easy way out and 2) the results are questionable (stink)

At work, yes. For Blitz3D games / apps it's a waste of time because tangent space normalmaps are not supported.

this glow filter makes the guy look much more friendly isn't it?

it would be nice if we had some of these filters to use... either in BMax or B3D...

... although, i don't think that any sort of filter whatsoever would be capable of making that guy look any more friendly.


thx for the input guys... appreciate it..

--Mike

We got that gloom filter! There's a couple of implementations, some are fast, some are slow, but we got them. Kind of.