Originally posted by Omniscaper
Such an implementation would be useless, unless someone will take the time to create the new textures. Using a photoshop manipulated texture original will not work well. Someone will have to literaly hand trace the parts have hieght differentiation.
In reguard to normal mapping, doesn't that require a high poly version of the ships for it to be convincing? So far there are only a handfull of those. That modeller would also have to create bumpmaps from scratch to make a goodlooking highpoly model that normal mapping would draw from.
Sorry Omni, but you're slightly off the mark on this one. The way normal maps are usually created is a simple two steps:
First, a very high poly model is created. Lots of subdivision, lots of greebling.
Second, this model is run through a program which takes the high poly model, and creates a low poly version and a normal map. This normal map contains much of the "missing information" from the high poly original.
The reason normal maps are so attractive is because they can make a 1500 poly model look like a 15000 poly model and not stress the video card nearly as much as more exotic techniques such as TruForm. You also get pixel perfect lighting as a bonus. The downside, however, is that you need a very high poly model to generate the maps from. I'm not sure if that's what you meant in your last paragraph, or if you meant that the card literally needs to draw the high poly version (which it doesn't).
