[Flipside]

LOL They aren't as terrible as they look. Oddly enough, sometimes, the more simplistic and 'clean' you make them, the better they look

[Scooby_Doo]

But don't you need a high poly version that will used to derived the normal map from? I don't want to cut the ships up and do individual panels or worse yet... rivets 

[Shade]

Dug around a bit, and there's a nice tutorial on normal maps to be found Here. As you'll see, using a high-poly model as base is one option, if you want to go for the super-special-uber-realistic look (I imagine the BSG team might find this useful considering the ridiculous detail on their top of the line Galactica model). But you can also just convert a standard greyscale bump map if all you want is to add some extra detail here and there.

Hell, one can probably even combine the two to get something that looks even more detailed than the original super-detailed model, if one feels so inclined

[Flipside]

Yup, bumpmap conversion is usually the preferred method unless you are a Masochist, I've tried creating normals using a, something like, 2 million polygon model once, and the program crashed, when I did finally find the problem (1 inverted polygon) it still took nearly 3 disk-churning hours to generate something that looked almost no different to a normal map made with heightmaps.
Just remember to turn anti-aliasing on when doing panel seams, It helps get rid of the 'Grand Canyon' effect sometimes

[Nuke]

i tried generating a normal map for the sf succubus, it was a disasterouse failure. sence i didnt feel like making an uber-high-res succubus, i just applied meshsmooth to the origial. but it only seems to work on areas of the smoothed succubus that potruded from the bounds of the original mesh. theese areas looked higly curved, but there were of jaged edges from where the smmoothed mesh curved into the main mesh. come to think of it, normal mapping would look really cool on vasudan fighters, give the bioplating a more scaled look. you could also make planet models look perfectly round. you could also add some serious detail to asteroid models.

ire we gonna use 3 channel normal maps? or some other setup. i noticed some of the dds formats were 2 channeled (uv only). i just want to make sure i make normal maps in the right format for what freespace is gonna use.

oh ive been using melody (nvidia) for generating normal maps from a super-hi-poly model. the program isnt very stable, is there something better i should be using?
 
it seems im a masochist

[Flipside]

LOL A Masochist Destructionist.... That's very nearly Zen

Well, the one in Lightwave is probably just as unreliable, it's difficult to set up and freezes solid on occasion, only you have to leave it for about 90 minutes before you find out either way, so I'd say stick with the one that simply crashes at the start

[Scooby_Doo]

I've read that site before and no luck.  I ran those the DDS converter but it just produces a blue only normal map.

[Flipside]

Hmmm... I had that happen to me once as well, it's something to do with the settings, I'll take a look tomorrow and see what I can find

[Scooby_Doo]

Problem found and fixed. I was using the normal mapping in the save as DDS plugin, not the filter->nvidia tool->normal...

Still it comes out bad... the creaves are pushed out and the panels push in (i.e. the opposite). This is probably cause of my uv mapping scheme.  I don't think I'll be bothering with normal mapping anyways, takes too long to render on this old piece of junk LOL

[Flipside]

LOL Just desaturate your colour maps and convert them if you have to, any normal map is better than none

[Shade]

If it comes out exactly opposite of how you wanted it, you could always try inverting the colours and see if it works.

[Nuke]

i was going over the newest version of the nvidia dds plugin for photoshop and noticed a few cool new things theres a new dxt5_nm format (compressed but designed specifically for xyz normal maps) that ive not seen before. it seems the best format tu use, as its compressed (and hopefully lossless). it also seems we can now fade out the alpha of transparancy, which makes the handeling of cockpits better (as you can fade out the glass with distance, and turn of the cockpit using that detail box gizmo thingie). theres a checkbox to allow non power of 2 dxts, anyone know if freespace can use them? finally we got alpha zero border, which will help clean up things like skybox corners. you now have 3 settings of compression quality. of cool stuff, its why its good to update your dev tools from time to time.

[Flipside]

Hmmmm.....Thanks for that, I could seriously use one or two of those features

* Flipside goes to update his Nvidia tools...

[Scooby_Doo]

Bleh... either inverted or regular the mesh is completely torn apart.

I'll stick with bumpmapping for now..

[taylor]

theres a checkbox to allow non power of 2 dxts, anyone know if freespace can use them?

Nope, it won't.  Non-power-of-2 DXTs were crashing for many people so I made it a requirement.

[DaBrain]

Did I ever post this picture?



 

[Shade]

*is speechless*

[taylor]

That's the primary model/maps that I'm using to test the new code with btw. 

[Scooby_Doo]

Is that normal mapping or bumpmapping Debrain?

[DaBrain]

Normal mapping in MAX.

It was simple, just took my last PSD of the high-res map I made, took the 'lines' layer, added some stuff and used the Nvidia Normal Map Converter on it (height map -> normal map).