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Re: Toying around with normal map approaches
Heres pretty much the same example, using a realtime shader in max, that should be fairly representational of what you would actually see in a game engine. You see only the example that uses hard edges really gives you a clean result, the other two examples having pretty obvious smoothing errors. #3 isnt absolutely… -
Re: Toying around with normal map approaches
Kodde I noticed on your second example you are using the same UV layout on both the all soft and the hard normal instances. With soft normals its a good idea to keep UV's connected but where you have hard/split normals the UV shells should be kept separate. This is why you are getting nasty-ass seams on your hard… -
Re: Toying around with normal map approaches
That really makes me wonder why object-space normalmaps are not more widespread. They are basically perfect, just need a simple flag system for symetry, and look as good as example 1 for a fraction of the time spent (no splitting required)... -
Re: Toying around with normal map approaches
With more accurate, slower, offline rendering(scanline in max for example), yes that is the case. But the way most realtime engines do it, no, it just doesn't work out how you would want/expect. Welcome to the biggest annoyance dealing with NM crap =) I blame the damned programmers. -
Re: Toying around with normal map approaches
If i'm getting bad smoothing there, and it is noticable then yes i would. But that is besides the point, it was simply an example. If you take the same mesh, after the fact, like say you have a mesh built for TS maps that only has hard edge splits at the uv splits, then yeah this will be the same vert count. But thats… -
Re: Toying around with normal map approaches
Well, it will never be higher, because you're using OS, that's for sure. I don't think you can make the assumption that for every asset, where you have a hard edge, you also have a uv split. This generally can be the case, but not always. Its ideal of course. But really, there is a different mentality all together when… -
Re: Toying around with normal map approaches
Ah, i'm not saying that it's not beneficial to delve into this as deep as possible, I'm actually saying that a lot of the tests previously posted in this are pretty much stopping at viewing their results in max or maya and saying "yep this works" or "this looks like ass" and this isn't a very good test because max/maya… -
Re: Toying around with normal map approaches
Just to be clear on this. All my examples in this thread so far are screenshots from Mayas Viewport, some of them with "High Quality Render" option turned on. Hi Qual is still realtime viewport results. Whether this is "scanline" or not I wouldn't know as I don't really know exactly what that term means. -
Re: Toying around with normal map approaches
Perna has a point, it's -useless- to compare these techniques in Max or Maya, how many games do you guys know that are rendered in these software packages? Even if they're using the same .cg shaders as the engine the content is getting treated differently. Any time you bring a mesh into an engine the tangents and…
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