Preview: Malakai

Lightray

Hello all,

Tis me again. I've been trying to understand how normal mapping is done. It's a long and confusing battle but I am slowly getting there. Here's what I've gotten done so far.

My questions right now are:

1) Is my high poly model sufficient enough to make a normal map for my low poly model? Does it need more detail? All I want to do at this stage is fix the lighting so my low poly model will look smoother when light hits it.

2) On making a normal map, I have to uv map my low poly first then apply the normal map taken from the high poly onto this low poly uv map? Is this correct?

3) If anyone uses Zbrush, does zbrush have a feature where you can downgrade the subdivision of a highpoly model into a low poly one? I want to know if I can make high poly models in zbrush first then just convert into low poly for max?

Thanks all,

Lightray

Found this cool Zbrush pipline tutorial for use with other 3d program.

http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?t=35390

low odor

Poop has a great tut on the whole process
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow.htm

fogmann

I think you certainly need to add some more definition to your high poly to create a good looking normal map. The ears don't have any detail, that's something you want to have fully modeled or sculpted. You could leave out fine facial wrinkles and similar textural details and add that through greyscale map that will be added to normal map, but the rest should be modeled. The jacket can use some cloth wrinkles and also the pants around the crotch area would be at least a little wrinkled, as well as jacket around armpits and elbows. And of course the shoes they are very undefined.

Lightray

Yes I've read that tutorial (poop's workflow) but it went over my head as many online tutorials. I think I need to learn the basics first before all will suddenly make sense to me.