Question: I notice with the big jungle knife thing that the normal map has to be 'extreme' to get the flatness back to areas and correct other lighting issues. Isn't it more efficient to have the normals of the low poly version to best match the high poly, and then render the normal map? Or does this not really matter much as long as the normal takes care of it? Or is there just some other reason that the low poly seems to be given the same smoothing group all around.
i made the highpoly from the low poly on this one, and this is just what generated out from Zbrush from Zmapper, the other Zbrush normal map generation didn't have as intense of a normal color change on it at all. i'm not quite clear why its doing that, but from what i've seen both worked out fine, i just liked the way that the edges turned out on this one a bit more.
Nice stuff. For your machete you should mirror the normal map and texture since you can't see both sides at once. You know where to apply if you want to move to CO :p.
i thought about doing that, then i looked at how much resolution i would gain from doing that on a square map, and it wasn't to much. maybe only about a 10% increase. so i figured it would be better to have asymmetry instead.
haha yea i know if stuff doesn't pick up soon, i just might do that hehe.
