MeshMapper

[rattle]

http://developer.amd.com/gpu/MeshMapper ... fault.aspx

This tool is pretty decent and first and foremost, free. It can generate normal maps, displacement maps, ambient occlusion maps as well as some other ATI specific stuff. It's easier to use than blender or any other 3D app that can bake, especially when you don't model in them.

It can import Wavefront OBJs and two other formats unknown to me. Good for wings3d users, it does not mess up anything upon importing. Just make sure you don't have any unmapped faces on the low res mesh. The high res mesh doesn't need UV coords.

The results are quite nice for anything without consistent mirrored UVs (see the seam at the back of the head for example, quite ugly).

You might have to save the generated maps from within the application in a different format as it generates them as 32.32.32.32 DDS.

[smoth]

sounds really cool. I may have to give it a whirl some day.

[SwiftSpear]

Where did you get a normal map renderer for spring?

[rattle]

Kloot wrote a normal map shader in Lua which I've taken it out of PURE since it wasn't available publicly.

[Kloot]

The original was / is semi-publically available at http://www.darkstars.co.uk/downloads/vi ... er_tst.lua , but unfinished (still in widget form, etc) so not of much use to most people. (You also need a master engine build.)

[Argh]

It was deprecated for a reason, Rattle. Kloot hasn't finished certain things that are pretty important if we're going to actually use it. Just warning y'all, before you decide to stick it into anything yet.