Oolite Bulletins

BTW what does "normalmapped" mean? Does that mean that without shader-support on my PC I can still use these?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping

Comes into play with shaders, but you can use Griff's ships even with no shaders. They just won't look as good as they COULD.

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping

Oh! According to that Wikipedia page, normalmapping is the same as bumpmapping!

Knew what bumpmapping was as I've been active in the demo-scene where many demo productions in the early 90's were some of the first programs to include bumpmapping!

JazHaz wrote:

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping

Oh! According to that Wikipedia page, normalmapping is the same as bumpmapping!

No, that page writes: normal mapping, or "Dot3 bump mapping"

Eric Walch wrote:

JazHaz wrote:

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping

Oh! According to that Wikipedia page, normalmapping is the same as bumpmapping!

No, that page writes: normal mapping, or "Dot3 bump mapping"

Picky, picky! LOL

normalmapping is vastly superior to bump mapping.

Although, Oolites implementation of Normal mapping could be alot better.
eh actually, maybe not, not quite sure about OpenGL, but it does look alot better on Direct3d

JazHaz wrote:

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping

Oh! According to that Wikipedia page, normalmapping is the same as bumpmapping!

Knew what bumpmapping was as I've been active in the demo-scene where many demo productions in the early 90's were some of the first programs to include bumpmapping!

(I might be a BIT wrong, depending on the Oolite implementation... this is from the perspective of working with RayTracers)

JazHaz;

Normal Mapping;
Imagine that everything in the game universe has a line perpendicular to the surface. So, a flat piece of metal, part of a ships delta wing or a triangular surface on a station, has an imaginary line sticking streight "up" from the surface at 90 degrees. That is the "surface normal".

If it is CURVED surface, say, a "bump", or a semi-spherical section on something, then there will be a kind of "weighted point" that describes the "actual middle", and the normal will project up at 90 degress from that point.

Light sources, in a way, have "normals" too (but they are not called normals, these are light sources, so what we have are virtual "rays"). Lights also have colors and intensities.

Normal mapping then is taking all of the vectors of all of the surface normals, and squashing them against all of the light (rays). Mathmatically computing what the surface "would look like" in a "real world", given the angles of the surface normals AGAINST the light rays. So "true lighting effects" can be approximated by "painting" the pixels what they WOULD be if they were bound by the physics of the real world.

Bumpmapping (can be) a simplified variation of normal mapping. Exactly how it works depends on the implementation.

One step up from all of this could be reflection mapping. So you would see (distorted, to varying degrees) reflection on metal and "glass" surfaces... reflections of the stars, nebula, planets, other ships and stations... but that would demand a LOT of computing power and slow the game down.

Diffuse Map:


Diffuse Map + Bump Map:


Diffuse Map + Normal Map:


Shamelessly borrowed from http://planetpixelemporium.com/tutorial ... ormal.html.

ADCK wrote:

Although, Oolites implementation of Normal mapping could be alot better.
eh actually, maybe not, not quite sure about OpenGL, but it does look alot better on Direct3d

I don't think that the 3D API used has anything to do with the quality of normal mapping. The only realistic way to compare with DirectX directly would have been possible be if we had a DX renderer for Oolite. Plus, I don't think there is anything wrong with Oolite's implementation of normal mapping, really. Actually, the fact that the normal map can contain parallax map information encoded in the alpha channel (a feature that nobody seems to be using up to this point), makes it a particularly attractive implementation, in my opinion.

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

Diffuse Map:


Diffuse Map + Bump Map:


Diffuse Map + Normal Map:


Shamelessly borrowed from http://planetpixelemporium.com/tutorial ... ormal.html.

I see only broken image links...

Looks okay here... there's one full stop too many at the end of the URL though.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I see only broken image links...

Likewise...

me too but if i copy/past image url it works fine.

If I try to open one of the images I get his in my browser:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /tutorialpages/images/ingamenormal.jpg on this server.
Apache/2.0.46 (Red Hat) Server at planetpixelemporium.com Port 80

I've made an attempt at remaking the 'Escape Capsule' although i seem to have ended up with a ship based on what looks like a Nike trainer - this was meant to be a 2-3 day remake, something quick to do over the Christmas holidays but it turned out to be the biggest struggle of all of them so far, i appear to be getting worse at doing these instead of better
Because it looks so much like an old dap i think it needs a few screen shots to try and explain it a bit better to everyone:



Link to the download is on Page 1 of this thread