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Free Normal mapper/editor (xNormal)
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Free Normal mapper/editor (xNormal) // Roundtable
Post by Jack Edwards // Oct 6, 2006, 5:41pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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I haven't had a chance to test drive this but I gotta admit that it looks pretty awesome:
http://www.santyesprogramadorynografista.net/projects.aspx
New version was just released and the programmer is VERY actively updating it as you can see with this thread:
http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=105812&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1
-Jack. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Oct 8, 2006, 9:08am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Just in case you guys aren't famliar with normal mapping he's a real time capture of my tS display. It's just a plane with a quicky normal map applied rendering in real time using DX. :)
http://www.motbc.com/ForumStuff/NormalTest.jpg
This is realtime per-pixel lighting not texture mapping. If you move the light around the highlights and shading change as if the painted geometry is real geometry.
I used this plugin for GIMP to turn my doodle into a normal map:
http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/%7ecocidius/normalmap/
There are also plugins available for PhotoShop.
trueSpace 7 supports this shader type in VRay as well. So definitely something worth checking out.
The cool thing about the first link I gave in this thread is that xNormal will take a highres model and map the details on a low res mesh. I'm not sure how this compares with tS7's built in normal mapping capability to generate normal maps from highres meshes, and would certainly be interested in hearing what the limitations of tS's normal mapping system is -- for example: will tS handle situations with overlapping or floating geometry? What about areas such as armpits where there may be more than one surface along the projected ray?
And hey, can we get the xNormal guy working for Caligari? :D :D :D :D
-Jack. |
Post by Burnart // Oct 8, 2006, 4:04pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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51.6 mb download? - crikey.:( |
Post by Steinie // Oct 9, 2006, 1:17am
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Steinie
Total Posts: 3667
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i_edwards,
The first program you mentioned I cannot download for the life of me. Have you tried? I click the green download button and nothing.
The Gimp normalmap program looks real interesting and I will check out later. Was there ever a mention that TS7 will get a normalmap paint utility? (if that is the proper verbage) I've spent very little time with Hexagon2 which has something like that. Getting it to work with tS7 I haven't done yet. (If someone had the steps...)
Thanks for the info. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Oct 9, 2006, 9:50am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Hi Steinie,
You could try this link for (xNormal):
http://w10.easy-share.com/648730/1160421494-78a9caef9e213dd13d5b0adafc406474/xNormal_3_9_2_win32.zip
Dunno about tS getting normal map painting but that would certainly make a lot of people happy. There's no real substitute for 2D paint programs for painting your maps, but 3D paint might be cool for sketching ideas out and smoothing out normals and textures around seams -- as long as it paints on your existing UV map... not creating one of those equal spaced triangle UV layouts like Nendo did. :(
Normal mapping is definitely the way of the future. It's much more useful than traditional bump mapping.
Hopefully in 7.5 Caligari will package their built in Normal map projection utility so that you don't need to use the PolyReduction tool and hunt through the Link Editor to fish it out. I'll have to test it but my guess is that the built in normal mapper will handle most basic projections but that you'll probably need a prog like xNormal for complicated character projections. My appologies and major kudos to Caligari if I'm wrong here and Caligari's normal mapping handles complex model projections without issue :p
-Jack. |
Post by tomasb // Oct 9, 2006, 10:37am
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tomasb
Total Posts: 261
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Dunno about tS getting normal map painting but that would certainly make a lot of people happy. There's no real substitute for 2D paint programs for painting your maps, but 3D paint might be cool for sketching ideas out and smoothing out normals and textures around seams -- as long as it paints on your existing UV map... not creating one of those equal spaced triangle UV layouts like Nendo did. :(
Normal mapping is definitely the way of the future. It's much more useful than traditional bump mapping.
Hopefully in 7.5 Caligari will package their built in Normal map projection utility so that you don't need to use the PolyReduction tool and hunt through the Link Editor to fish it out. I'll have to test it but my guess is that the built in normal mapper will handle most basic projections but that you'll probably need a prog like xNormal for complicated character projections. My appologies and major kudos to Caligari if I'm wrong here and Caligari's normal mapping handles complex model projections without issue :p
-Jack.
When you press normal map button it creates something default which may not be exactly what you need because it also creates simplified version abd unwraps model to texture.
but you can extract normal mapper node and provide your own UV coordinates as well as lores/hires models. Normal mapper should be robust and should handle a very complicated topologies. It is optimized for low-resolution normal maps and handles boundaries between "unwrap patches" in a special way that reduces artifacts. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Oct 9, 2006, 11:15am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Nice Thomas :-)
I just think you guys should make this feature more obvious. Maybe give it an icon on the same bar and have it pop up a dialog or stack view that allows you to select low and hi res models? A lot of people would see this as a VERY cool feature for tS. Might even buy the program for it.
Do you know if it'll handle floating topology on the highres model? A lot of people use floating topology for armor and things like that so that you don't have to worry about the backsides of the armor confusing things and projecting into the normal map.
-Jack. |
Post by tomasb // Oct 9, 2006, 9:17pm
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tomasb
Total Posts: 261
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Nice Thomas :-)
I just think you guys should make this feature more obvious. Maybe give it an icon on the same bar and have it pop up a dialog or stack view that allows you to select low and hi res models? A lot of people would see this as a VERY cool feature for tS. Might even buy the program for it.
Do you know if it'll handle floating topology on the highres model? A lot of people use floating topology for armor and things like that so that you don't have to worry about the backsides of the armor confusing things and projecting into the normal map.
-Jack.
it is always about time and priorities unfortunately.... but as the tool is there, adding new modification of it shouldn't be a problem so if there is some spare time...
tool takes a combination of surrounding intersections. it was tested with some very ugly geometry and gived some good results, but it depends from model and need to be tested... if you have some models that gived bat result, you can send them for inspection... |
Post by Jack Edwards // Oct 10, 2006, 5:24am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Great :-) Thanks Thomas! :D
Keep up the awesome work! If I encounter any problems I'll send them in.
Oh yeah, there was one other feature that I saw people were asking for xNormal to support: Including the bump mapping on the highres model into the calculations for the normal projection.
Sounds like that might be a pain to code...but thought I'd mention it.
-Jack. |
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