Elemental - FAT CAP - Earth
polycounter lvl 18
Woohoo!!! Finally the boards are back up...hopefully now I can get some advice on the next steps with this little critter 
So - heres the concept
and heres the mesh so far
What I need to know is - can the low res (or even the high-res) model have open edges and/or overlapping geometry if it is to be normal-mapped. I looked for this information all-over when the boards were down, but couldnt find anything that dealt with the subject. Thats part of the reason why theres not much of an update at the moment.
Anyway - hope I can get a quick reply to this question as Im ready to start optimizing and uv-ing after I get these quandries solved.
Thanks in advance guys
So - heres the concept
and heres the mesh so far
What I need to know is - can the low res (or even the high-res) model have open edges and/or overlapping geometry if it is to be normal-mapped. I looked for this information all-over when the boards were down, but couldnt find anything that dealt with the subject. Thats part of the reason why theres not much of an update at the moment.
Anyway - hope I can get a quick reply to this question as Im ready to start optimizing and uv-ing after I get these quandries solved.
Thanks in advance guys
Replies
i don't think open edges are a problem.
but i believe if you have overlapping geometry it can get a bit weird.
at least on the internal parts that you wont see anyway. but like the petals at the bottom and flowers on top of the head, i think you will need to seperate those to their own objecs and render them seperately to get a good normal render.
at least when i was using Orb to generate mine i noticed that over lapping pieces would write normal information, say a leaf on the top of the head, not only on the correct leaf bit but the leaf normal info would also appear on the head portion undeneath it.
you should do a test normal map with seperated geometry and non-seperated just to make sure.
Can you show me how to do arms like that?
Heheh I hope that "gross-looking" is a good thing Jerome!!! I'll posty a wire of my model up here tommorrow so you can see how I have constructed the arms on this guy - its nothing special though mind you. Looking at anatomy books is really good to get a good understanding of the forms that go into making up areas like the arm etc. - or body-building mags are very good to see very defined musculature, sinews and veins etc....and theres also everybodies frined - www.3d.sk
Anyway - on with the updates...still alot of work to do on this high-poly mesh but heres where I am at the minute
Or - I might find a couple-o-hundred polies laying about that I can sink into the staff... hmmm... :S ...maybe not
Im using MAX7 to generate and display my normal maps. Now - using the DirectX display of material in MAX7's material editor - when the normal map is applied (tangent space) - the map looks inverted - or rather - it makes the object look as if the normals are inverted. However - when I render the image out - it looks ok.
Does anybody know what is going on here. Its not a TOTAL block in my normal mapping process - but it's sure infuriating to have to render an image out each time I want to view my normal map!!!! I can rectify the viewport thing by flipping the normals of the object - but thats not the point!!!
Using the metal bump viewer shows the mapping OK but when I add a light to the scene - the object is lit from the opposite side to the light is on - i.e if the light is infront of the object - theback is lit and vice versa.
Im using an NVIDIA Geforce FX2500 by the way if that makes any difference.
*sob sob* ...any help here?
Sorry if it tastes a little funny, I've been using it myself throughout this challenge.
I've managed to find the problem though - it appears that I hadn't applied a RESET XFORM to my lowpoly object in MAX and upon doing so, inverting the normals of the resultant mesh, and then re-normal mapping everything - I've gotten much better results.
Will post up some current shots tonight.
Still LOTS to do...and its crunch-time at work for out current game...that means lots of late-overtimes, followed by lots of lateer nights trying to get this finished. Hmmmmmmm - premature male pattern baldness and chronic, stress induced heart problems here we come!!!
How do I control the strength of the shine on different parts of the model? not just the brightness of the spec but the actual "glossiness".
i.e - the eyes should have small, "tight" highlights on them as they are very shiny and wet. However the skin should by less shiny and therefore the highlights would be larger and more diffuse. The teeth would have a specular somewhere inbetween the two.
How would I go about doing this in the constraints of this competition? I know that you paint a spec map much like a bump mamp - with white areas being more shiny and black areas being less-so... but this will only let me control the sttregth of the spec wont it? Not the actual "diffuse-ness" or "tightness" of the shine itself?
Reading this back - Im not sure if Im getting my point across very well!!! I dont really know the technical terms for what Im trying to achieve - or even if it is possible at all.
Anyway - I hope someone can help me out on this one - not long till deadline time now!
Bah - oh well. I thikn I'll just call this done for the minute. I will post in the submissions thread a bit later on.
Here's a posed beauty render of the "finished" character. MMMMmmmm - how I love 3DSMAX's bones system
Sorry for not posting more crits during the competition but deadlines have been looming and free-time has been sparse.
Good luck everybody