xNormal - Normal Mapping Application

[jogshy]

uploaded the 3.10.6 beta 1

[Grizzly3D]

might try this, thanks for posting it

[jogshy]

The final 3.10.6 has been released!

- New render AO without highpoly feature with normal map support. Select your lowpoly model in both the highpoly/lowpoly grid, specify a normal map(optional) and you will get fast and cheap AO approximation ( and remember to use cages to limit distance for better results ). Also can be used to get more detail in the default AO system. What does is to invalidate the hit surface normal and use the normal present in the normal map.

- Two new tools: height map to occlusion map + PhotoNormal to make normal maps directly from photographs!

- Copy/paste support in the tools

- New normal-to-cavity methods

- Added antialiased/non-antialiased map mask output files

- Added two new tangent basis calculators(D3DX,MeshMender) to improve compatibility with programs and 3d engines.

- Added the 8MonkeyLabs mesh importer for their upcoming game Darkest of Days

- Re-structured the program internally to be more memory efficient and also coded again the multicore/multithread routines( I fear that, pls let me know if you have any crash problem related to this ).

- Added camera/light automatic movement inside the 3D viewer

- Solved multiple bugs ( Photoshop filters displaced bitmap preview, grayscale JPG import error, OpenGL window resize, interior AO, incorrect external cage warning, etc... ).

Btw, requires the latest June 2007 DirectX, sorry I'm a M$ofer

[jogshy]

xNormal 3.11.0 has been released!

- Added full screen antialiasing support for the DX9 graphics driver.

- Solved problems with ALT+TAB and also with the mouse.

- Added a checkbox inside the 3D viewer to lock the position of the light to the camera. Notice the shadows dissapear when you enable this mode(which is logical on the other hand)...

- ATI viewer problems solved(I hope...)

- Changed the default normal map back color to that nice blue we all luv!

- Added a checkbox to auto center the camera orbit point in the 3D viewer.

- Distributed rendering with hxGrid

- Added "attenuation" and "jitter" options to the ambient occlusion generation. Also improved a lot the quality of the AO generation. Caution when you set the # of rays... now with 32 you can get the same results than 200 before.

- Modified internally the memory manager to allow to use RAM more efficiently. That increases a lot the polygon limits.

- Solved a crash bug when you set the render maps width and height different.

- Added a two new Photoshop filters: the dilation filter and the normalize filter.

- Now the grid is a plane, not lines.

- Solved a problem that was causing the 3DSMAX6/7/8 exporter not to be loaded using 3DSMAX 6 and 7.

- Added projective caustics/translucent shadows to the 3D viewer ( see Bojana's example ).

- Now the DX9 graphics driver will use high-quality floating-point normal maps if your graphics card can filter/mipmap them correctly.

- Added axis indicators to the referenceCubemap.jpg.

- Rolled back to the DirectX April 2007 edition due to problems with the June 2007 one ( debug mode is broken, speed loss, etc... ).

- Added a new tool: the object/tangent space converter.

- Added a "mesh scale" parameter to control the conversion units when importing geometry.

- Solved some hang problems with multi-core CPUs when showing the progress window.

- Corrected tons of bugs and improved the UI accesibility with tab order.

Enjoy it!

ps: IF you see a bandwith error on web please try 1 hour later or so... getting too much downloads in a row hehe

[Talon]

Great stuff, dude

Appreciated!

[jogshy]

xNormal 3.11.1 has been released.

Basically solved some bugs and two new minor features ( load mesh folder + AO bent normals detail ).

[Lord Ash]

you sir, are to be commended...(thank)

[Soul5tice]

Can someone explain what the typical setup for getting xnormal to work for characters? What I've done so far is allign both of my high poly and low poly in 3dsmax and then export them seperately with the xnormal exporter. Then I load the high res and low res mesh in xnormal and capture the normal map, which seems to work ok however my normal maps have some weird shading issues. Is this the typical workflow? I went through the tutorials on the site however I'm still uncertain what the typical setup for capturing normal map using two meshes(hi and low).

If anyone can give me a quick breakdown on how they've succesfully use this to generate normal map I would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks in advance!

[jogshy]

Originally Posted by Soul5tice

Can someone explain what the typical setup for getting xnormal to work for chars!

Well, i'm not an artist but I think you can do this:

1. Model your lowpoly char in the base pose. Rig it, etc...

2. Clone the lowpoly in base pose. This will be your highres model. Then, subdivide and sculpt it. ( Some artists do first the high model and then create the lowpoly as a simplification of the highpoly model... but well... )

3. Export independently the lowpoly and highpoly meshes ( as char_base_pose and char_base_pose_high ). If you use 3dsmax I recommend you to apply and edit a "projection modifier" over the lowpoly mesh until covers completely the highpoly model.

4. Pass char_base_pose to xNormal into the lowpoly slot.

5. Pass char_base_pose_high to xNormal into the highres model slot.

6. Bake the maps you need in xNormal.

Then I load the high res and low res mesh in xnormal and capture the normal map, which seems to work ok however my normal maps have some weird shading issues.

Don't use the 3dsmax2obj exporter... messes a lot the vertex normals. Better use the ASE or even better the SBM xNormal exporter.

Other advice... ALWAYS use cages... uniform ray distances method sux.

[Soul5tice]

edit: got it working with better results!

Thanks alot for you're reply I really appreciate it.