yet another normalmap tool ? needed or not ?
polycounter lvl 20
Howdy all,
a friend was working on a normal map generation lib, and added also displacement map and ambi occlusion stuff. (older project by him http://fozi.codingcorner.net/code_tools.htm ) however he didnt really build a tool or plugin from it, but gave me the code if I wanted to go further.
Now I somehow wonder if you think one should go for such a tool, or rather leave it to the apps (max7...), my personal motivation would be doing it as I dont have kaldera for max5 and a friend is using c4d and also doesnt have such features and I think melody is a bit bloated.
the tool would do:
- normal maps
- displacement maps
- ambient occlusion
- alpha map (if the hires contains "holes" or transparency map)
- color map (in case the hires one has baked textures or vertex colors)
I wouldnt put time into texture coord generation or model output and alike, so all that must be given by user, another issue would be which modelformat to pick...
however I would do of course a previewing tool of the models with the output maps applied.
anyway wondered how you think about it, sure it would be my time, but if you think it would be useable to more, why not
however if you think the tools out there are sufficient and it wouldnt be worth the work...
a friend was working on a normal map generation lib, and added also displacement map and ambi occlusion stuff. (older project by him http://fozi.codingcorner.net/code_tools.htm ) however he didnt really build a tool or plugin from it, but gave me the code if I wanted to go further.
Now I somehow wonder if you think one should go for such a tool, or rather leave it to the apps (max7...), my personal motivation would be doing it as I dont have kaldera for max5 and a friend is using c4d and also doesnt have such features and I think melody is a bit bloated.
the tool would do:
- normal maps
- displacement maps
- ambient occlusion
- alpha map (if the hires contains "holes" or transparency map)
- color map (in case the hires one has baked textures or vertex colors)
I wouldnt put time into texture coord generation or model output and alike, so all that must be given by user, another issue would be which modelformat to pick...
however I would do of course a previewing tool of the models with the output maps applied.
anyway wondered how you think about it, sure it would be my time, but if you think it would be useable to more, why not
however if you think the tools out there are sufficient and it wouldnt be worth the work...
Replies
A good alpha-map generator would be nice too, Max's RTT seems a little unsteady sometimes...
For a model format, I think either OBJ or FBX would be best, since OBJ is widely available for nearly all modelling software (and it's a good format that preserves a lot of info), same as FBX, although I don't know if it's easy to add FBX support to stuff...
I think a program like that (if it was "light", easy to use and fast), would be used by a lot of people, maybe even over existing tools if it did everything to a high quality.
I could use such a tool, Blender has no render to texture features and none of the available tools can handle vertex colors. Well, ORB can but it always crashes when I try to feed it anything with vertex colors or even materials.
oh the tool would be platform independent and opensource, so if anyone wanted to add other fileformats, people could at a later point
.x doesnt look too bad either or ? I mean its pretty much gamebased or ?
oh greetings to Passau
and I'm with him on occlusion map good and fast then I'll be interested !!