I’ve been working on this for a few hours now. While it’s high-poly now, eventually I will create a low poly version using normals baked off of the high poly. That is, if I can find a way to bake them. Blender seems to use camera coordinates or something to bake the normals, but what I really need is tangent-space baking. Are there any programs I could use externally that would bake a good normal? I have approximate smoothing groups applied, but it’d be REALLY nice if Blender would support bona-fide smoothing groups.
Chevy: Yeah I know, it’s messy. However, I attached the screws and things to the rest of the mesh because when I unwrap it, I wan the entire handle to come off as a single unit. Likewise for the barrel parts etc. If there’ s a better way to do this (besides an unmanageable number of loop cuts, I’d love to know.
Dicho: YESSSS! At last! This has been holding me back for a while and it’s great to hear it’s being implemented.
the screws can still be set up to be unwrapped on top of the handle. just put the faces over them, not only do you have unnecessary faces this way, any game engine might light it on a per-vertex basis, give you an area filled with lighting artifacts there.
@Lost: Don’t worry, this is not the actual mesh that will be in the game since it’s far too high poly. I’m just baking the normal map off of it. Also, since I’m lighting it per vertex (rather than per pixel) I don’t think it’d be a problem if I used it. Still not an excuse for shoddy modeling I know.
@Tigger: I will definitely check that out. Thank you very much for that recommendation.
its actually per pixel that you want, per pixel doesnt shade dependent on the vertices, so it doesnt matter were they are located, but normal mapping shaders are per pixel so thats good. my question is how many polys it is, since it doesnt look too high if your game is planning to have decent graphics and since its going to be taking up a quarter of the screen if its first person. my be my own preference tho.
hey i was just woundering if i were to use your pistole in a game and gave you credit would you mind? the game is not def or anything just woundering. thanks.
mick: sure, though I think I’ll be restarting it from scratch since I’ve had some practice and now actually understand what lost was actually saying : P
