posted 07-24-2002 06:55 PM               

1: build your low poly model.
2: Select faces you want to unwrap and detach them all to elements.
3: Clone a copy of your mesh and edit it so that all your elements are
layed out in a rectange (like uvwunwrap)
4: Select all your unwrapped elements and scale the vertex along the Z
plane so that they are all flat.
5: Apply a uvw planar map and then put a uvwunwrap modifier ontop to pin
the coordinates.
6: Morph the model back into the original shape using the first copy. Dont
collapse it yet.

Ok now the clever bit.

7: Apply a tesselate to the morph, then paint a displacement map to put in
your little bumps, muscles and details. For example, you may choose to add
the philtrum, cheekbones, dimples, eyes, nostrils, lower lip, chin crease
and forehead curve using displace.
8: Slide the morph back to the flattened shape. Ok, see how the model is
still flat, but all those bumps you added are still sticking out?
9: Apply a gradient map to uv channel 2, then align it so the higher bumps
are white, the lowest is black.
10: Render this flat on.
11: Convert your bmp height map to a normal map using the free dos tool
from nvidea.

Like I said, its not ideal, but it gets you through if you want to spend 0$.

posted 07-25-2002 12:26 AM               

If you are into lightwave then check this out, a free script that makes the standard lightwave do what polybump does (make normal bump maps)

not only that it was done on request by Arnie Cachelin a member of lightwave support for one of their stinky snotty end users (me).

For some reason i cant link the original URL so here is the script

To use it, apply the shader to the relevant surfaces, set diffuse to 0 and luminous to 100%, and add baker.
The normals are encoded into the RGB so that values from -1 to 1 map from 0 to 1 in the color.
x,y,z map to r,g,b.

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// LS/PT: BumpRGB.ls by Arnie Cachelin
//
// Convert surface normals to RGB levels, useful for baking bump maps
// for dot3 real-time bump map pixel shading.
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------

@version 2.3
@script shader

color;

create
{
}

init
{
}

flags
{
return(COLOR);
}

process: sa
{
sa.color[1] = 0.5*(1.0 + sa.wNorm[1]); // Shift negative normals into color 0 to 0.5
sa.color[2] = 0.5*(1.0 + sa.wNorm[2]);
sa.color[3] = 0.5*(1.0 + sa.wNorm[3]);
}

posted 07-25-2002 01:17 AM               

You can render the max file using colored lights to get the normal map and it looks better than heightmap conversions. Oooooh, those pretty colors.

You set max values thus...

Ambient 128,128,128
Material white... blynn, no spec or gloss, black ambient.
Blue 0,0,255 directional from the camera.
Green 0,255,0 from the top.
same from bottom with a -1 multiplier.
Red 255,0,0 from the right.
same from left with a -1 multiplier.

Render that baby and voila.... it works with the cheap version above too...

Damn. its full of stars.....

posted 07-25-2002 04:39 PM               

Whatever you say dude...

Erm.

Ok, look at it this way, its a morph map which is displaced and rendered. Nothing to do with bones. Therefore world space or not, it works fine.

posted 07-29-2002 02:24 AM               

The second technique seems to do as you say, but obviously CryTek must have worked away around that?

posted 07-29-2002 04:37 AM               

Incedently i tryed putting the LW version and the crytek version side to side, and the major and only differences i could see with my eye were the presence of the watermark and the lack of resolution in the crytek, but i guess that is because i dont want to pay for the crytek version

tpe

tpe

posted 07-29-2002 11:51 PM               

When using lightwave (I think the modeling app used at id, not that it makes much difference as file formats are easier to convert for models than scenes) it is very easy to make the controll mesh UV map it and then apply a subpatch modifyer so the UV matching is not really an issue. If one were not using UV colour/bump/specularity maps on the high poly version and only procedural textures it would be an advantage not to have identicle uvs as atomatic mapping could be used on the high poly version, otherwise it does not take any longer or require any work to make both meshes have the same UVs.

Sorry not much scence in this post, too much help from 2 year old daughter