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j!mi
10-28-2006, 12:04 PM
Sorry if this has been posted before, I did a quick search and didnt turn up anything.

I've been studying up on normal map creation and read that its best to make all your edges soft when applying a normal map. Does this hold true for game models as well? What if you have a character wearing an open jacket? Usually you would want to make the edges of the jacket edge hard as to avoid strange shading right? How would you go about handling it?
Arcanox
10-28-2006, 02:07 PM
Depends on how you work with your normal map. If your painting your normal map in photoshop entirely then you may want to work with hard edges.

However, if your projecting it from a highres mesh, I generally have all faces set to soft or the same smoothing group. The reason for this is that your high poly model will generate the appropriate edge bevel in the normal map, so no smoothing group is needed. Additionally, if you perform a projection with multiple smoothing groups, it will not interpret the high poly mesh properly. There will be an area where the geometry is missed because the vertex normals are split when you use different smoothing groups.

This tutorial should explain most of the technical aspects of working with normal maps fairly well-

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow.htm

Theres also a thread in the Game Art WIP forum that goes over normal maps.
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10-28-2006, 02:07 PM
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