Comments on:

By: MM

MM — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:12:37 +0000

Makron666: his portfolio looks pretty neat. Is he free to work?

By: Clive

Clive — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:23:58 +0000

I agree with the point makron made. If the lighting is truly ambient, then it wouldn’t be affected by the shape of the surface. If you’re that picky, use a light map.

By: Makron666

Makron666 — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:30:19 +0000

Yes, normals must always be painted by hand. it needs only to enhance detail. In a 3D model, it would be used to add any detail which doesn’t alter the model, eg. text, bumps, scratches, dents, groves. I strongly suggest you look at some portfolio’s of good texturers. Here’s the person teaching me: http://www.teamblurgames.com/odium/portfolio/texturing.htm
And with the ambient problem, maybe make it not affect the normal, just diff, and maybe spec.

By: mman

mman — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:36:40 +0000

i think that the concept of your ambient lighting is maybe a bit wrong. maybe you should look at it as it is done with 3d objects in animation. set up the main light and its strength and radius – be it moon or sun – this light source is casting shadows, now on the side/sides you set up another light which is not casting a shadow, if everything is looking like you want then hurray.

By: MM

MM — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:25:15 +0000

No thats not what I’m complaining about. It’s a tech issue.

Although the generated normals aren’t perfect. I used a program called Shadermap which does pretty good normals. But normals painted by hand would be best.

By: Epsicode

Epsicode — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:04:38 +0000

You should give CrazyBump a try to quickly generate good bump/normal maps from a texture: http://www.crazybump.com/ (assuming that you were complaining about the normal maps quality and not the shader itself)