Watchtower WIP

animatr

just some normal mapping practice. ~5 hrs so far. First environment, so any crits would be appreciated.
Thanks!

wire:


lo poly:


hi:

Josh_Singh

are you tileing normal maps??? If so, How do you do that?

animatr

nope, i actually built each brick and placed it on the hi res version. That got super boring, so after finishing a wall of bricks, id group em and copy them over the another like wall. Out of the 5 hrs of wor, placing and making bricks took up 4 of that hehe. what a pain

lkraan

A wall with variable bricks sizes you should be able to do with the Max plugin Greeble.
I think that it's a free plugin.

sye

[ QUOTE ]
A wall with variable bricks sizes you should be able to do with the Max plugin Greeble.
I think that it's a free plugin.

[/ QUOTE ]

woah.... dont think he's gonna be very happy about that hehe..

JordanW

why did you make a high poly version? you can texture this just like an environment you know, with tileable textures.

animatr

mostly because this was to get accquainted to normal maps, not so much as a lesson in practicality, but just trying to get good UV's to allow for good normal maps. Ive worked with greeble, but I didnt want to use it mostly because I dont want to make work thats comprised of plugins, as I am not sure how that is looked on upon in the industry.

and mostly, i made the hi poly first, then decided to go ahead and try out a normal map on a low poly.
thanks for all the comments!

animatr

hehe, wow, i say mostly a lot....

anyways, whats a good poly range for this sort of thing anyway?

Wells

irregardless of how it was made, I think the final product looks pretty cool.

MoP

Irregardless isn't a word.

Also, it does look pretty cool - although those stones look like they've just been glued to the outside of a ready-made tower ... usually when I see stones like that in buildings, they're held together with mortar...

And I think it would have been possible to make a tiling normal-map, maybe a few variations (bake a model down to a flat plane, render it out at 512x512 or something) then apply that as you would if you were building a game level ... save on time building the high poly model, and also on texture memory, if we're thinking in terms of game assets here.

The low-poly landscape and flags are pretty jarring next to the smooth stonework.

It should look cool with a diffuse texture and GI lighting bake...

animatr

thanks MoP and Sectaurs!
yeah, i wsa going to try out that nvidia photoshop filter to vreat some normal maps for the terrain and flags, just havent gotten around to it. As for what you are saying about the baking it down to a flat plane...Im not sure what you mean. Could you elaborate? Are you talking about render to texture or actually building a normal map off a plane like i think i saw cholden do on a lightsaber challenge?
Thanks for your time
jeremy

MoP

Yeah, I think Mojo2k did a mini-tutorial on it in the 2d/3d forum, have a search ... basically you make your high-poly geometry in the shape of a regular plane, make sure it tiles, then use Render to Texture to bake it down to just a flat normal-map ... then you can use that on the surface of your architectural model like you would any other tiling texture.

cholden did that with his lightsaber, yes, he built the geometry and rendered it down to a flat plane if i remember right... that's what i'm talking about.

animatr

hot action! thans MoP. I guess I'll give that a shot next time.

Wells

*sniff* nobody gives the word a chance.

"Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so."

JO420

looks good,but where is the joker and the thief?

JordanW

it's completely possible to make tileable normal maps, and it's pretty dang easy too... you simply model your square texture in max/maya whatever, then you can either normal map it to a plane, or use doom3 to generate a flat normal map (which works quite well IMO) then you can use nvidia's PS plugin to add finer details. I would say if you plan on doing next gen environments you should definatly practice this technique, and if you really wanna try normal mapping untileable stuff you should probably try something more unique, otherwise people will just ask you, why didnt you do tileable?

animatr

thanks tinman, i just recently looked up the tut for that technique, so im probably gonna do something soon using it. I appreciate all the feedback, i've learned a lot here. thanks all!

cholden

Looks good animatr. Yes, normal maps can work like any game texture, tiling, custom, whatever. It takes practice, but they can be a lot of fun and powerful! Based on what you've shown, you'll should have no problems making a nice normal mapped scene. Your bricks render stong and look good. If you want to know more about how I use normals pm me or something.