xNormal v3.0 ( normal mapper tool )

[jogshy]

Originally Posted by Pedro Toledo

Cool, I've used it and it's an interesting and fast application. I would just like to see a better filter to the map rendering, I was getting some jagged parts on my maps.

I was using version3.9.4.8115 Beta 1

Do you mean antialiasing or dilation in the normalmap? I'm working in a new triangle rasterizer to solve some triangle edges problem.. but is hard hehe! those edges are always conflictive hehe !

btw, i'm still looking for an example of transparency/base texture baking/new maps rendering if somebody is interested!

[jogshy]

xNormal v3.10.2 is released!

- Completely revamped triangle rasterizer. Less artifacts, more accurate, top-left filling convention, a bit faster.

- New "black sand pixels remover" image filter for AO/thickness/proximity artifacts.

- Independent map filtering.

- Increased maximum map size

- Maps are rendered individually in memory ( much less RAM in use )

- Solved tons of bugs ( including pixel offset and BMP scan lines )

[jogshy]

xnormal 3.10.4 has been released. thx

[tyio]

yes, i haven't see this support post before

first, you did a great job, very congrats


i have some problem with the cage, because i plan to use your software, for making, from a rims+tyre picture, full poly, the normal map, for the same model in low poly


the probleme is there always rays that goes fail, and so, by seeing your tutorial, i see i can use a "cage", but, it's still a cage, an scale objet from the low_model ??, because the tyre is well pushed, but the rims isn't


i attach a picture, to show the problem


i guess there is a good solution, because an head have the same way for cage ?



gracias para tu bueno trabajo, pero cuando intento el traducion, de engles to frances, es muy fun ^^, como my espanol , si puedo ayudar para traducir, digame (sorry, no hace espanol desde 2000 ;()

[jogshy]

Originally Posted by tyio

first, you did a great job, very congrats

thx! Oohhh btw, nice car models in your page. I love the Ferrari 2005!

Originally Posted by tyio

i have some problem with the cage, because i plan to use your software, for making, from a rims+tyre picture, full poly, the normal map, for the same model in low poly


the probleme is there always rays that goes fail, and so, by seeing your tutorial, i see i can use a "cage", but, it's still a cage, an scale objet from the low_model ??, because the tyre is well pushed, but the rims isn't

Not really. A cage can be considered as an "extruded along vertex normals low poly model". The point of the cage is that you can not only control the ray distance but also the ray directions. I suggest you to see this excellent cage tutorial by Ben Mathis:

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutoria...workflow_2.htm

Originally Posted by tyio

[url=http://tyio.3dvf.net/xnormal_pb.jpg]i attach a picture, to show the problem
i guess there is a good solution, because an head have the same way for cage ?

By the way, is that 3dsmax,? If you use 3dsmax I recommend you to download the latest xNormal 3.10.4 which can export meshes and cage information directly from 3dsmax 9. Use the 3dsmax's Projection Modifier over your low poly model, set the "push value" in a way that covers completely the high poly model, then use the xNormal's 3dsmax mesh exporter and save a .SBM file that can be used directly in xNormal.

What you need is that "Projection modifier" in order to generate a good cage extruding the lowpoly mesh vertices along their normals.

I added a 3dsmax9 SBM export tutorial just for you in

http://www.xnormal.net/Tutorials.aspx

If you use other software, like Maya or XSI, sorry I have no idea... But i'm sure they have any "Extrude using vertex normals" mesh tool. If all fails you can try to specify a good uniform ray distance with the "closest if ray fails" option, but the cages method is the best.

Originally Posted by tyio

gracias para tu bueno trabajo, pero cuando intento el traducion, de engles to frances, es muy fun ^^, como my espanol , si puedo ayudar para traducir, digame (sorry, no hace espanol desde 2000 ;()

Sure! To translate xNormal is easy. Just take a look into the [xNormal installation directory]\ui\localization_french.xml . To translate just change the text into quotes. For example:

<File Value="le Dossier"/>

change it into:

<File Value="Archive"/>

Once you translated all the XML file you need to modify the first line:

<Localization Name="Français (French)" Version="3.10.4.0" ISO3166One="fr-FR" RightToLeft="false">

, change the Name value to "Français (French) by tyio" so won't collide with the previous localization_french.xml name ( I use the Name to index them, so must be unique ).

Then, save it, for example, as [xNormal installation directory]\ui\localization_french_modified.xml ( is very important that the file starts with localization_ ). Run xNormal, go to the Plugin Manager and change the default language to yours..

After you test it a few inside xNormal, please send it back to me so I can include it in the next release.

I did all the translations using the http://babelfish.altavista.com/ so I bet almost all are funny , so any help will be welcome, thx

[jogshy]

Just uploaded the 3.10.5 with some bugs corrected, a SBM mesh exporter port for old 3dsmax version(6/7/8) and recompiled the image filters to support the new Photoshop CS3.

thx

[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... ) and also i'm pretty sure I added some new bugs too.

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

[ChaosDragonDZ]

I have a question, are the rays sent from the low poly to the high poly, or the other way around? i'm having trouble generating normal maps, when I do, about 95% of the texture sheets are blank, and the "rays failed" count is in the the thousands. I dont know i'm doing wrong though

[jogshy]

i'm having trouble generating normal maps, when I do, about 95% of the texture sheets are blank, and the "rays failed" count is in the the thousands. I dont know i'm doing wrong though

Sure the cage covers completely the highpoly model. Sure you check the "use cage" in the lowpoly list corresponding slot.

On the other hand, if you don't use cages ( so you use uniform ray distances ) sure the distance is well set. However, I absolutely recommend to use the cage method instead unless your object is convex and closed(like a sphere). See the flash tutorials on http://www.xnormal.net/Tutorials.aspx referred to the "how to measure well the ray distances".

Try to check/uncheck the "discard backface hits" too. Sometimes can miss hits ( specially if you use the 3.10.5 which had a small bug with this ).

Finally, sure the highpoly model and the lowpoly model are well aligned ( aprox in the same position and have approximate scale ). If you use 3dsmax remember to collapse(when possible) + Reset XForm ( and caution with the 3dsmax2obj exporter, better use the xNormal SBM one or the ASE). If you use Maya do a "freeze transformations" before exporting your models.

Hope it helps.

[ChaosDragonDZ]

thanks alot jogshy! the cage didnt cover the high poly, thats why it wasnt working

[jogshy]

xNormal 3.11.0 has been released!

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

- 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!

[andy circus]

i'm getting a "waiting completion" message
when i try to make a normal map.
and i'm not sure how to fix it!
do i need the .net thing? i only downloaded the zip installer version.
it looks awesome though with the examples.
i like the demon one and the girl on the dragon.
moving the camera and lights i need to get used to
(i can go into the 3d normal mapped viewer)

[jogshy]

Originally Posted by andy circus

i'm getting a "waiting completion" message
when i try to make a normal map.
and i'm not sure how to fix it!

That's because you selected the hxGrid distributed map renderer.
To use the default map renderer select in in the "renderer" group box in the normal map tab.

do i need the .net thing? i only downloaded the zip installer version.

You should download and use the zipped version only if you have installed a previous version of xNormal ( so all the system components were installed previously ). If not, you need to install .NET 2.0, VS2005 SP1 DLLs and DirectX 9.0c April 2007 or above.

The .exe installer have embedded the VS2005 SP1 DLLs, but you need the DX9 and .NET 2.0 too.

Hope it helps.

[andy circus]

ok thanks i'll try that, i just clicked the "generate maps".
edit: there she goes! i got a map!
also i haven't measured the distances,
but i'm just wrapping my head around it
i'm figuring 3.07 should work for everything
room to swing a cat!
but it looks like a tangeant map to me!
it looks great also, all the examples
i don't think i downloaded the .net so i'll try that also.

[scaryjack]

i am new with the concepts of using normal maps from higher res models on lower res ones. so my question is, if there is anywhere a good tutorial for beginners.
so far I worked with maya an exported a obj model to xnormal for which i could generate all possible maps. but still the model looks unchanged? so how do i get the normal maps from the high detail modell and how can i reload this later again in maya.

i hope my questions are not too "noobish", but i have no clue where to start looking.
right now my nice modells have around 200k polygons...i am shure this can also be done 15-20k