I'll give everyone another taste of the model...

January 31, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'll give everyone another taste of the modeling things I'm trying to learn. Here's a normal mapped fish that's been projected against a flat plane. The plane is flat, an extremely low-polygon model, that has a normal map that gives the illusion of depth. As the light moves around, it behaves as if it's sticking out, casting appropriate shadows. The top fish has the light head-on, while the lower one has it from below.

Normal mapping is already starting to be huge, the reason why Doom 3 can run on old video cards yet the creatures seem so incredibly detailed. Both NWN2 and DA are certain to have it, so I'm trying to figure out how to best use it. From a practical perspective, this particular normal mapped fish would look okay laying there dead. Since it's flat, it would look odd moving around (there's no tail geometry to flap). My next project is seeing if I can take a high polycount fish and change it on a low polycount version, yet use the normal map to make it look good.

I also have a small confession to make. I've been having a really hard time with a certain section of the story, struggling with how to fill it in. I was thinking of having a murder mystery as part of the game, then I realized the entire section doesn't really further the story much at all. I woke up this morning and a bunch of plot pieces fell into place. I immediately grabbed a pencil and scribbled things down, feeling good to be back on track again.