I have learned to model with polygons, and I have always understood that spring just rendered stuff by showing all those polygons in the correct order. However, yesterday I clicked a magic button in upspring called "recalculate normals" and now all my ant models look absolutely amazing! What i understand is that this button changes the hardness or smoothness of points and vertices. How can I get actual control over this stuff in modeling programs like blender and maya? I never even knew this existed and I feel like an idiot.
My second question is about normal maps. Does spring support them because I have seen references to them in various places. How can I "generate them from a high poly model"?
Normals (where did I go wrong?)
Moderators: MR.D, Moderators
Re: Normals (where did I go wrong?)
1. I released a working demo of normalmaps on this engine, see Games / Mods, a few pages back. Kloot wrote the code, I debugged it for ATi, it works nicely even on low-end GLSL-compliant GPUs. It's pretty obvious how to use it, if you know some Lua.
2. You can either generate normalmaps by using your software to smooth / resurface your low-poly meshes, or you can execute them by hand, using grayscales (again, this is something I've explained, it's just buried). There are lots of articles about this online as well, my presentation was really simplistic.
3. You should use "recalculate normals" ++ "recalculate vertex normals, 3DO style" with an appropriate angle (the number it asks for is the degrees to breaking, i.e., if 45, then anything over 45 degrees is sharp, anything below is soft).
4. Smoth and a few other people import their models one Piece at a time, in OBJ format, because then your welding data is kept intact from your modeling environment. This allows for complete control over these things, if you need it. If you're not sure how to do this in your modeler, you need to consult your modeler's documentation.
2. You can either generate normalmaps by using your software to smooth / resurface your low-poly meshes, or you can execute them by hand, using grayscales (again, this is something I've explained, it's just buried). There are lots of articles about this online as well, my presentation was really simplistic.
3. You should use "recalculate normals" ++ "recalculate vertex normals, 3DO style" with an appropriate angle (the number it asks for is the degrees to breaking, i.e., if 45, then anything over 45 degrees is sharp, anything below is soft).
4. Smoth and a few other people import their models one Piece at a time, in OBJ format, because then your welding data is kept intact from your modeling environment. This allows for complete control over these things, if you need it. If you're not sure how to do this in your modeler, you need to consult your modeler's documentation.
Re: Normals (where did I go wrong?)
Argh once again you are infinitely helpful please go eat yourself some pie.
Thank you.
Thank you.