The reason why there are many kinds of normal maps is because different people made them. GalEmp made the Demon normal map, and I made for example the Moloch main tile normalmap. Comparing these two ships is a pretty good way to figure out the differences between our opinions regarding the Shivan surface structure. I always interpreted the Shivan tiles more like some stone carved relief styled stuff
like this with two main elevation levels - "brighter" and "darker" plus some smaller detail - instead of more rounded shapes like the Demon has at the moment (and I'm probably going to make my own version of the Demon normal map for my own use because I don't especially like the rounded vesion, it just doesn't seem to follow the Shivan design features as I see them
). Creative differences, that's all.
On topic of Sobek/Hatshepsut normalmaps, thanks for the critique. The problem with the previous maps was that they were actually way too exaggerated, not exactly in depth but in width. And while they may have gotten people used to them, they definitely didn't depict the detail in the diffuse map but something totally different. The seams between the "scales" were ridiculously oversized - they were from the period when the normal maps were new and fancy and people tended to use the feature jsut for the feature's sake, which ended up making many ships look like party balloons with exaggerated surface detail on the normal maps. In fact, we had discussions about this in the internal, and it boils down to the question - do we want to use a feature just for feature's sake and have exaggerated surface detail that even a blind man could see them with their forehead, or to use the feature to depict the surface detail in the maps. You might guess in which camp I stand...
To be fair though, the Sobek/Hatshepsut normals weren't as bad as the original normal map for Perseus or some of the other early normalmap stuff, but the old tiles also had the tile's outline visible in the normal maps, creating a nasty effect with linear edges breaking the scales in half. In other words they were broken. So they had to be re-done, and the task befell to me. While I was at it I figured I'd make them actually match what you see in the retail (and upgraded) diffuse textures and the upgraded versions for them. And the lines apparent in those textures were actually surprisingly thin - you can check this easily by going to Ship Lab (press F3 in Mainhall), select Sobek, disable rotation, zoom into the bow area and switch normal maps on and off repeatedly in Rendering options, and you should see that the width of the seams now actually corresponds to what
designed the ships to look like. I also added a whole bunch of surface detail to the normals in addition to the seam lines and made higher resolution versions of the maps. Same applies to the Hatshepsut.
As far as depth goes: For their width, the lines are as deep as they can conceivably be; if you prefer the wider and thus deeper lines, grab the tiles from the beta VP's (if you can tolerate the tiling edges crisscrossing through the panels). Due to how the normal map concept works, the apparent depth of normalmapped detail is limited by the size of the detail. The normals have a certain maximum "slope" or angle that they can tilt the surface to. For example, if you have a 20 cm long ruler and you place it at 45 degree angle vertically, and a 2 metres long two-by-four plank, the end of the plank is about ten times higher than the end of the ruler. In case of normal maps, this means that the only way to increase the depth of an already fully tilted seam line is to increase the width of the seam, which would break the original design of the ship - and while we do take some artistic lisence, this is still FreeSpace
Upgrade project. Modded stuff is found in FS Modding forum, and I'll be more than happy to help on how to find and use for example old normal maps if you prefer them.
Also... stuff from FS Modding often ends up into MediaVP's in one shape or form, especially if it upgrades stuff that appears in Retail FS2. So if you have a vision that deeper tiles would look better on Sobek/Hatshepsut, you can go there, find information on how to make normal maps, and make fixed versions (without tile outlines) of the deep seamed old normal maps, and if enough people prefer them to mine, I don't have anything against them being used in the next set of MediaVP's.
Goober: The MV_Complete exists because it can do without the lower detail effects (and, partly, maps) in Effects and Assets respectively, and just have the high-res/animated versions of them. So it's a bit smaller in total file size.
Masochism is also acceptable explanation.
Regarding lighting levels:You should go and take a look at the wiki page about
Command Line and how to edit lighting values; personally, I use the following custom cmdline lighting setup:
-no_emissive_light -ambient_factor 35 -ogl_spec 20 -spec_exp 15 -spec_point 1.2 -spec_static 1.5 -spec_tube 1.5Remember though that the lighting values are even more a personal preference than normal maps. If you don't like my setup, read the Wiki and edit the individual lighting values to your hearts' contents to find settings that you like.
