Normal Map noob questions

Krisonrik

I want to learn how to use normal mapping, since I want to get into game industry and most of the job openings require that. 1st of all, do I need an extra plug-in to be able to achieve normal mapping in Maya? If not so, can anyone please post a link of a tutorial of it please?

EarthQuake

Im not sure if theres anything maya specific here but check the sticky on normals maps. http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=81058&an=0&page=0#81058

cholden

You don't need any special plug-ins for a full normal mapping pipeline in maya (at least for maya 6 and better). I've posted a couple tutorials covering the basics of generating and viewing normals in maya (mostly so I wouldn't forget)

http://chrisholden.net/tutor on the righthand side.

CheeseOnToast

You don't need a special plugin for Maya. Maya 7 has a very nice normal mapping tool called "surface sampler", which can be found in the modify menu. If you have an earlier version of Maya, the tool was called "transfer surface info" ( I think), and had to be activated in your plugin manager as it's not switched on by default. Transfer surface sucked pretty badly though, you'd be better off with Jogshy's Xnormal program, which is getting better by the day. It can be found here .

moose

you can also hook up a material in the hypershade to use a normal map.

first, turn on high quality rendering Shading menu of the viewport

in Hypershade:
- Create a file node
- middle drag it to the shader, and choose 'Other'
- connect the out color to normal camera
- assign shader

bam!

Krisonrik

Brilliant! wuv you guys ^O^