[Scooby_Doo]

Cool! Now could you explain how, please 

[DaBrain]

You create a plane, set a really high number of tiles (like 200*200), not too much to crush your PC though(!) and apply a displacement modifier on it. Now you just use your height map as displacement map.

That's it.

[Scooby_Doo]

Oh that... ehh, was hoping for something useful on existing models. Sorry DaBrain. 

[DaBrain]

Flipside was talking about a plane too...

[Nuke]

@Scooby_Doo

MAX can do exactly the same... just as sidenote.

technically speeking so can truespace, well sort of

[Colonol Dekker]

Mapping is the only Bane in my otherwise happy Modelling world.......

[Flipside]

You'll find most companies create their normal maps from the UV Maps not the models themselves, it's a lot easier and using the technique above, actually is more accurate

It's only a few compaines that go really AWOL on their Normal maps to be honest

[Nuke]

im probibly gonna only do a partial normal map from a high res mesh, curved surfaces mainly, as thats the main binifit of normal maps. most of the blockey parts of the ship a simple planner normal map will work fine on.

[Scooby_Doo]

Oh they painted it on manually... well that looks a LOT easier than trying to create a million beveled panels.

[Scooby_Doo]

Ok I shouldn't have said that. I'm having no luck here... 

Heres the diffuse map:

and heres the normal map (applied it to the displacement map)



With mentalray this is all I'm getting:

this was a basic cube... all it did was blow out the sides, but it still doesn't have any depth in the grooves

[wolf]

Heres the diffuse map:

That diffuse map has already applied lighting. It should contain only the color data (like it's fully lit).

[Nuke]

yep, thats another thing i gotta do. get rid of all my painted on lighting effects. i use of those, so that makes my work harder. in fhe future im just gonna paint flat, but that doesnt change the fact that i have to remix 20 or so textures. fortunately most of it i can do simply by tweaking render styles.

[Scooby_Doo]

Ok I replaced it with a pure white texture, and then a nice blue/white cloud texture... results same as above.

[Turambar]

i wonder if we can get shadows working right.  with this and shadows, i could do away with fake lighting altogether

[Scooby_Doo]

real time shadows? slow, low-detailed and expensive compared to the free, high-detailed fake lighting.  (at least when it comes to self-shadowing)

[Nuke]

cant normal mapping get you some degree of shadowing. if the pixel normals of a downseam on a panel point away from the light, they will cast a dark line on what would usualy be a dark edge of a bevel effect in the diffuse map. thus it would apear correct from any angle.

[Scooby_Doo]

Woohooo I got it working....

One question how do I get rid of that rough sawedge sides?  The normal map is solid colors (no antialiaing)

[Flipside]

That's the pixel edges from the image conversion, if you use photoshop, best bet I've found is to apply a very slight outer-glow  effect or a semi-transparent Stroke' effect to the bump/height layer. Basically, I've been finding that non-anti-aliased lines only really work for straight lines or 45', every thing else seems to need it, which quite annoyed me since I'd made about 3/4 of a bump map before this became apparent

[Scooby_Doo]

Thats what I kinda figured, so I made them hard edges (this is only 0' and 90').   That cleared up a lot but there still some remaining.

Heres the normal:


and the result:


Also why are the panels blow out like that?

[Flipside]

Hmmm. not sure, could be something to do with the displacement setting causing the 'blow out' effect, it might also have something to do with those imperfections in the groove. Are you able to turn down the amount of displacement/bump used?