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Originally Posted by Red Phoenix  i'm not an expert either :P
fake it? hell ya they should fake it, did u hear me say other wise ?
game coding has always been about faking it and not simulating it hehe
that's the magic of it, that's that's why John Carmack could get a bsp game like Wolfstein3D to run on a stupid 386 while it would have required a server mainframe if the more traditional approach of "simulating it" was adopted by academics.
it's all the art of elusion. that's magic for u.
as for bump maps, i see no reason why they can't be used with Normal Maps.
it all depends on what u can get away with, if u don't want heavy parallax calculations to be done on some objects u can use fast bump maps on them, u'll use normal maps for things that actually make a visual difference, and remember normal maps have more data in them and require more processing power to display than simple bump maps.
so u should check on a game by game basis, and inside each game u need to look at all the assets here and there. sometimes it's not that straight forward to make out the difference.
but if u want ur 2d map of a wall to 'move out' when u approach it, normal maps are the trick for u, they provide the required level of depth and illusion.
Mental Image's occlusion texture? i can't say i heard of it.
u got lots of texture packs in the market and u got lots of ppl making their own textures, so it shouldnt matter much really.
btw, z-brush is cool but u should ditch it and try out MudBox.
2.5 D is nothing compared to true 3d hehe |
Yea many people Told me to switch to mudbox But i feel that Z-brush is much more proffessional and has been there for quite a while so they have more experience in these things as well as more plug-ins, My freind from Gnomon school suggested that we stick to Z-brush because it has more resources.
But MudBox Is much more easier and userfreindly than Zbrush, i know a person that's using it (not very well) but he seems to be having fun.
Anyways i just use it in a Pipe-line, so basically i just extract a 32bit Displaycement map and a Cavity map as well as the bump map so that i can use them inside Maya's mental ray with approximation editor, You should see the results then With proper lighting and passes rendered AMAZING almost like PS5 graphics :) and It renders So Fast with scanline!!!