Hi, for some reason I have slowed down.
Thanks Surfa/kraid object/tangent space
A while back I saw a youtube tutorial about baking normal maps (I glossed over it) it was for a modern game and at some point in the tutorial two options were mentioned when using a program called Xnormals between object and tangent space and the person selected tangent space but did not explain why, so now I guess I know why that person suggested tangent space.
Thanks kraid real grateful for the answers I ask about the light sources and if these models will cast shadows if the flash light is shone on them because I don't want the models to be out of place with the other models.
The illumposition, my past models need to be all redone as I think the origins are not centred. Regarding origins in Blender I just put all my origins at centre of mass when editing in blender the origins are moved around. This is the first time I have heard of illumpostion
Initially I thought that normalmap lit on a model wouldn't allow other models to cast shadows onto other models but this seems to not be the case.
I think what confused me is this
Normalmaps on the other hand are lit on a per pixel base, but only respect actual light sources no shadows cast by props or bsp. This means your prop will be lit properly regarding environment lights and other light sources at the lighting origin of the prop.
The bit about no shadows cast by props I interpreted that as a normalmapped lit model would not cast a shadow onto another prop
A normalmapped lit model uses the pixels of the texture to form its calculation( I guess now that also includes the illumposition, the origin of the model ) to produce lighting information
Where as a vertex lit model uses all the vertices of the model to form its calculation to produce lighting information. to the engine, is this correct?
If a model has a 1024x1024 pixels that would be 1024x1024 points of information that certainly would produce a more realistic result than the amount of vertices the model uses. I am still trying to clearly understand the disadvantage of normalmap lit model, the only disadvantage I see is that it doesn't contain BSP lighting information. In what situation can one think of that a normalmapped lit model, may not produce the results that one desires? And how would the same model vertex lit generic be the better alternative?
I have not checked this out but if HL2 Ep2 engine introduced bumped map lighting then I guess models from those games would use normalmap lit models but they do not.Even portal 2 and I am not sure how many but the texture of the models I have seen use Vertexlit generic why use Vertex lit when normalmap lit produces more realistic result as it calculates per a pixel?
Is it that a vertex lit model would be affected by a real world brush where as a normal map lit model would not be affected by a real world brush is this a disadvange?
If I understand correct, using Vertex lit on a model that the more vertices a model has the more defined a shadow will be when it is cast onto it. This would be due to having more data to calculate light information. Like with pipe 1 that has more vertices than pipe 3 in your example.
Like i showed you before, there can be issues with triangular gradients on vertex lit props especially if there are huge brightness differences from one vertex to the other.
Cool, I believe I am beginning to understand, vertex lit would cause a problem if they are used to calculate light information. If the distances between vertices were great, where one vertex was in darkness and the other vertex was not. There would be a disparity in how the shadow looks between the two vertices, it would not look smooth just like in the last example you show with the phong and vertex lit props.
I'd even say you as the level designer have to know about the engines restrictions as well as the things where it shines on.
Your job is to avoid situations where you hit these restrictions and create situations the engine can show it's advantages.
I will try and remember this, I still don't know source 1 and source 2 is out, to be honest I am still learning art program like gimp/pshop and Blender. So I guess I have fallen behind in many cases.
In that example you provide, the Phong shading prop, the shadow looks really smooth compared to the vertex lit model.
Sorry if I have not clearly understood and if carrying on old ground is tiring I understand but thanks for all the advice it has helped me understand source and normal mapping a little better
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marnamai the vehicle looks epic, I would really like to know how one would UV unwrap something like that. What texture size would one go for, for a vehicle.1024 or 2048 or 4096, I can't work on 4096x4096 system cannot handle it. The wheels seem like cylinders of some kind but it seems like it would be difficult to unwrap with all those details.
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Cheers kraid
yeah the edge split modifier in blender fixed up how the model received lighting. Those shadow errors seemed to disappear.
I have created a few new pipe sets, one is a gutter type pipe set, another is thicker pipeset and the other is a gas type pipeset. There is still one more gutter pipe set I am working on.
This took much more time than I thought because pipeset2 and 3 I had to redo the whole texture my mistake my error, I slowed down a lot because of that.
For the gutters, black was difficult to get so my gutter pipes fully lit looks dark gun metal kind of colour.
Pipe set 1(gutters) have 5 different skins dark white, white, red rust, black black2. Testure size 1024x1024
Pipe set 2/3 has 3 skins texture size 2048x2048 I wanted to fit 3 pipesets on the texture sheet but I could not and I could not fill up all the space with just 2 pipesets.
pipeset1_1a dark white
pipeset1_1b white
pipeset1_1c red rust
pipeset1_1d black
pipeset1 1e blackV2
Pipeset2 and 3 skin C
skin A
Skin B
Is there any problems one can see with the textures and models so far?
I have to somehow get these props working in source. Perhaps I have lost focus of the level that should be the most important aspect. I guess this happens sometimes.