Hi All! I''m new to this forum. I''ve noticed that there is a lot of interest in the game artist community right now on how to make and use normal maps. Normal maps can be used together with per-pixel lighting to make relatively low-poly surfaces look extremely detailed. The cool results can be seen in upcoming games like Doom3 and Half-Life2. To help artists understand how to make and use normal maps, I''ve created a tutorial at my web site. The tutorial explains what a normal maps is, walks through a couple of different techniques for making them, and then shows how to apply them to a real-time model. Here''s the direct link: http://www.bencloward.com/tutorials_normal_maps1.shtml Give it a read and let me know if it''s helpful or if I need to add any more details. Ben Cloward Artist http://www.bencloward.com [Edited by - bcloward on June 24, 2006 1:29:05 AM]

Hey there bcloward!

Thanks for posting this! Looks like it could really benefit a lot of people, and I'm on my way to read it right now.

Just for the other people that are too lazy to figure this out or are planning to complain, here's a clicky.

Clicky

I'll be back and comment a little after I've read it =).

EDIT: Just for the record, I'm not an artist in any way, shape, or form...but I still, so far, am finding this article very well written and interesting (even if it is a bit hard to see )


"TV IS bad Meatwad...but we f***in need it"

If you're a girl under the age of 12, and you're high on marijuana...don't ride your bike. -TRUTH

[edited by - Boku San on March 21, 2004 10:50:09 PM]

Wow, I now know something I didn''t previously know. I can''t USE any of it, because I don''t have any 3d modellers...but I bookmarked it, so that when I do think "I wonder how the hell the models in HL2 look so fine," I''ll know exactly where to go.

Thanks for that.


"TV IS bad Meatwad...but we f***in need it"

If you''re a girl under the age of 12, and you''re high on marijuana...don''t ride your bike. -TRUTH

Very, very interesting..
Does this work for OpenGl?

Yes it does. In fact, it''s one of the foundation elements in the graphics engine of Doom3 which is totally written in OpenGL.

My tutorial is focused mainly on creating normal maps (not programming the game engine to use them)and is geared toward people on the art end of things, but any graphics programmer who does his homework should be able to easily encorporate this technique in OpenGL or DirectX.