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Lab Assistant
#26 Old 18th Oct 2007 at 7:42 AM
Sorry I should have realized Sims 2 came out before normal mapping and shader video cards really became popular. Colored bumpmaps are possible, it depends on how the engine is designed to read them. Usually it's done in greyscale only.

Normal mapping and hopefully parallex mapping will be VERY useful for Sims 3. I highly recommend studying it if you do meshing. However you'll need a newer video card (I know my 3yo Radeon 9250 doesn't properly support it)

This is normal mapped (one of my own works, a retrofitted Dralthi, a cookie for who recognizes it )
http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i...pg?t=1192689406

Here is a diffuse map (the texture map) and a normal map (the funky colors)


and the results


The "correct" way to do normal mapping is to create a very high resolution mesh, and a low resolution version. Create the normal map on the high resolution one and apply that normal map to the lower poly mesh. Harder yet, technically your diffuse texture shouldn't have any shadows/highlights in it as normal map will do this for you (although sounds a bit too difficult for people like me that paint with existing textures) Course you can always cheat [like me] and just use bumpmap to create a normal map (nvidia has a nice tool for this)

This is parallex: (I have no real solid knowledge about this, except it seems to be a definite improvement over normal mapping)


Summery: parallax > normal > bumpmap
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Instructor
Original Poster
#27 Old 18th Oct 2007 at 8:35 AM
[QUOTE=wes_h]
I think the game textures may have had most bumpmapping for objects removed, perhaps for performance reasons. Bumpmaps seem to be the first thing that disappears when people have a less powerful graphics card.QUOTE]

Or in my fiances case, the 'x-ray cursor' vanished. She plays the game on a laptop, quite a good one, but it has an ati mobility vga card, and apparently doesnt have what the game requires for the x-ray cursor...

Anyway, thats for another thread.

[QUOTE=Jasana_Bugbreeder]
Yes of course, why not? If you had made the mesh bump-map enabled, of course the same way for any time of mesh.[QUOTE]

Hmmm, forgot to check that bit

[QUOTE=ScoobyDoo]
This is normal mapped (one of my own works, a retrofitted Dralthi, a cookie for who recognizes it[QUOTE]

I regonize it but only vaguely, I can't place it

FifthAce2007

My Sims 2 creations are no longer supported. Regardless of what the individual post says, feel free to clone, recolour, chuck on a bonfire or mix in a blender! Just credit me/this site with the upload, and upload here only, thanks
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