I need help getting normal maps made in blender to work in reloaded. I built a high poly stone wall and a high poly wood beam in blender. I baked the normal to a flat plane as a test. All new to me as I just started using blender a couple of weeks ago. I finally get the results I wanted after much tweaking. I a save it all out, get it reloaded ready and..... fail

I test it in a few other programs and quickly discover that open gl programs render it correctly and Direct x does not. I tried flipped and inverting channels with no luck. The shadow and lighting info seems to be correct but the depth is gone. I did some research and found very little info but I think it has to do with the left hand / right hand coordinate thing or the swapped y and z axis in blender. The pic below shows the plain in 3 different programs. 3DCanvas (my old modeling program) is a DX program (the others are open gl) so I have never run into this problem before. The plain in reloaded looks exactly like it does in 3DC. Changing the different inverted maps around, change the direction of the light and shadows but nothing I do seems to bump in or out. Can someone please tell me why this is happening and how can I correct it.

Hi,

Press Ctrl+A apply all. then go to export and take this options:





Then it should work.

the website hosting my pics seems to be down atm. I will have to do this the hard way and post one at a time.



After more playing around I discovered that the model actually does work correctly. Just NOT in reloaded. I never really expected 3DCanvas to display normal maps correctly. It does read them just not very well. I kept working with darkshader until I got it to work in there. This is with Bond1's norm_alphaspec_tangentbasis.fx shader The attached pic is with bump @ zero

This one is with the bump turned down to -2.0 Same model and maps.

This pic is using the built in entity basic shader from reloaded. Looks right but color is bad. Probably due to not having the correct textures for the extra slots. Still the bump shape is correct.

Same model and maps in reloaded. Where did the detail go? It's just flat texture on a flat wall. What am I doing wrong or is there something wrong with reloaded? I really need find out if it's me doing something wrong or not because this is a serious quality issue if it turns out to be reloaded.

Did you have tried it like i said in my firt post?

I had the same error in Reloaded before!

I hit control+A

I see the same popup as shown in your pic. There is no "apply all"



There is the word "apply" That is greyed out and non clickable.

Just hitting control+A doesn't apply anything, it just opens the window. And I don't see what that has to do with the normal mapping issue anyway. If I am just being dumb, please explain it to me.



As for export options, the ones you posted are the ones I am using.



The pictures I posted should clearly show that the normal map does work. In fact to be honest even the included media in reloaded doesn't look as good as it should. The lighting and shadows are beautiful but there is no depth. It all looks flat to me. It like all that info is getting lost somewhere in the shader code. I mean if the same shader for reloaded works in darkshader, and the depth is there. Why can't it do it in reloaded is my real issue here.

I'll keep trying to figure it out in the meantime though.

Sorry you have to apply Location, rotation and scale separately.



It is because you can scale or rotait or change the location in object mode or in edit mode. and if you dont apply this change before you export, the normals are not in the right place.



edit: perhaps you can send me your test model and i have a look at it.



edit2: have you use this shader in reloaded:entity_basic.fx?

I see what you're trying to say now. All that was done before export. I'm new to blender, not modeling. Just out of curiosity I went back and tried that, but nothing changed. I do know how normal maps work, I just don't have a lot of experience using them lol. If the normal are in the wrong place then tell me why does the normal map work in everything but reloaded?.









The pic is just a few posts above. Again, if the normal are in the wrong place how did the shader bump it like that in the first place?

That IS the reloaded shader doing the bump correctly. Its in darkShader at default settings. If the shader see's the normal then why do they not show up in reloaded?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

The last pic shows it in reloaded.





edit: perhaps you can send me your test model and i have a look at it



I am hesitant to do that as I worked very hard on the high poly models that the maps were made from and really want to give it away.



The real question here to me is, Why does the basic entity shader bump the model in darkshader but does not do so in reloaded? It's the same shader!

I'll think about posting the file

OK here is a Test-model from me, with diffuse, normal and spec map.

It is FPSC Ready! And for you the blend-file!! so you can look at it!

I hope this helps you!



screen form Reloaded:





regards

Thanks for the model nomis. It does look good but it could look soooooooo much better.

I started this post because I originally thought something was wrong with my export from blender. I have since discovered that there is NOTHING wrong with the model, the problem is in Reloaded itself. For the past few days I have been loading Reloaded media into other programs for a comparison. The normal maps do in fact work in Reloaded. Just not very well. The is virtually NO bumping (or whatever the correct terminology is) in reloaded. It is there and it does work. It is very very weak though. The normal maps will change the light and shadows and give an extremely minor illusion of depth. I know the bump can be changed in the shader, but this is supposed to be an easy, minimal coding engine. I don't think the average Joe is going to be able to adjust the shader manually. Anyway, I was just going to let all this go for now since reloaded is still just a beta with lots of issues, but after putting nomis's test model through the same steps, it just reinforced the fact that there is something wrong with reloaded. Here are some screen shots to show what I am trying to say.



This 1st shot show the reloaded tent. In reloaded. Notice how there is very little difference with the normal map vs without the normal map.







Same tent side by side. In reloaded







I don't know what others see, but I see a flat surface with a flat texture on it whether the normal map is used or not.



Same tent side by side. In ultimate unwrap



[URL=http://s1026.photobucket.com/user/Spotaru/media/NMI3_zps20bf57c9.jpg.html][/URL



Same tent side by side. In blender







Now this shot is the tent in darkshader with normal map. Its the same model, maps, and shader (entity-basic). Notice how darkshader does bump the model correctly.







Now some shots of nomis's cube



side by side in reloaded







In the above pic you can see that the normal map is actually working but it's still just a flat texture on a flat surface in my opinion.



the model in blender. notice how much more detailed it looks and doesn't look flat.







same model in darkshader without normal map. Notice that it looks exactly like the cubes in reloaded. FLAT!







same model in darkshader WITH the normal map. The bump is so good the rocks seem to jump right out of the cube.







As anyone with eyes can see there seems to be a serious lose in visual quality here.

Ok i can see what you mean. the normal map is weak in Reloaded.



Try to change the strength of the ambience level and ambience colors in Reloaded. then it looks a bit better i think.

Yes that does make the light and shadow look a little better. But it's still flat. No bumping



I hope it gets fixed or at least give us some control over the bump intensity. I haven't touched shader code since early version ps 2.0 I know 3.0+ isn't that different. But I don't really want to go wading through the new shader to figure out how to do it myself. I would rather model and build levels than play coder.

It actually looks better in DarkShader than it does in Blender. More realistic lighting and less "flat" in my opinion.