Interesting - did you try loading up this asset and normalmap into an engine that you know is synced with the regular Maya baker ? After all, the results displayed inside Maya/MayaLT do not matter as much as what is shown inside a proper engine ...
Best solution I found bake them in your Engine of choice, export it, pad it, and re-import it as Lightmap. I don't understand why so many engines lack Lightmap bleeding/padding, not everyone has access to ingame code.
If it's for a game show it in game, out of game beauty renders mean bugger all to me because the engine handles shaders/normals/etc differently than a modelling tool so prove to me you know how to make pretty in engine.
Well those people were wrong. If you want to make environments, stick to UDK/other game engines, Rendering enviros in maya is a big nono. Also its alot easier to work with environments in an engine than in your 3d-package.
Yes, I am using Irrlicht 3D as the 3D engine. It being open-source and all is a big advantage. Not to mention I've found it one of the easiest 3D engines to compile. I'm using the latest version of Irrlicht 3D, version 1.1
You are right if he doesn´t want to put it in a 3d engine, but if he wanted to do so it would be better for performance, because the engine doesn´t have to triangulate the n-sided polys. Correct me if i´m wrong ;)
1st question possibly depends on the engine the model is destined for.. some engines dont like open meshes. But here ive seen models combined. 2. no idea myself, but i wouldnt quite rely on a pretty render to push your work.
Some nice stuff in there, eventhough the post effects are coming from the same engine Yebis 2) that is already running the Lumnious engine. I like the small detail on the camera that seem to be tessalated into the mesh. Might be overkill but is selling the the model really well.
Modelling=Top-Notch Particles=need some attention. I know this is difficult to do in a renderer. See if you can get into a game engine and use the engine's particle system. I find these much easier to work with than modelling softwares.
We use .tga files and .png files, however they both get converted to another format (which I can't mention any specific details about) for use in the game engine. I believe this to be the case for most game engines. -Adam