Adjusting normals in 3d Max?

[Nelia]

Greetings to everybody. I'm new to making meshes and have successfully done some clothing ones with 3d max importing them into the game. To be able to do this I tried to read as much as possible and document myself properly, however I still have questions and the load of information is very big.

In the article "Mesh: All about Normals" there is a description of what is a Normal Map, explaining it's something that helps meshes look smoother. After that I found other articles on the net explaining normal maps are made with colors green, blue and yellow.

In the same article is also explained how to adjust this normal map in Milkshape when one modifies a mesh too much, but I would like to know how to do this with 3d Max.

I'm doing the question mostly because I have seen other threads where this seems to be known but it's not explained in detail. For example Jasana_BugBreeder's tutorial on how to make new clothing meshes say at the end that in case bump maps are not possible to be seem all was needed was to make sharper normal maps. Other threads say something about doing them in Photoshop (like a thread titled just 3D Max)

The meshes I've changed look fine. I moved the vertices by hand to make it look smooth, but maybe there's a tool in 3d Max that can help with this. The other articles that say some things about a map similiar to the bump map that can actually be seen in Photoshop are a mistery. Is it possible to adjust this Normal map in 3d Max? How can it be done? Anything about seeing it in Photoshop?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can take the time to answer.

[Nelia]

After lots of reding I finally found my answer. I'm writting it here in case anyone else ever looks for something similiar here, however it may only be partially relevant to sim users, since half of the answer may not be something used in the sims game, but still I'll put it here just in case.

First, "Fixing Normals" and "Normal mapping" seem to be two different things. 'Normals' in a mesh seem to be data added to the faces of a mesh to calculate how the light will be cast on the face. It makes make a mesh with lots of cornered faces look smooth. In 3d max one can "fix normals" of a newly made mesh by adding smoothing groups, as explained in Jasana_Bugbreeder tutorial, or one can select faces of a slightly modified mesh that does not look good, select them go to the Modify menu, click on Faces then Edit Normals button.

"Normal mapping" -or the thing I saw about seeing normals in Photoshop- is something different. A Normal map is like a Bump map but using red, green and blue to make a mesh look more detailed. It's not a texture, it's similar to a bump map but much more powerful. It can be done in 3d max just like textures or skins are done: that is painting it with the aid of Photoshop or, other similar program, based on the UV map, or it can be done by 'baking it'. There are lots of resources to be found doing a Google search of "baking normal maps". However I'm not sure if normal maps are used in The Sims. Now I'm going to go and ask.