Is it possible to combine 2 normal maps (one tiled) and a regular diffuse map (or 2)? That's 3-4 images total. Adding the second normal map should be simple math (max (0, min (255, x - 128)) or so), but I could be sooo wrong. It may also be too long, or slow, for a shader.

I'm looking to do things like chainmail and scales, closer than a regular-sized texture can handle, and preferraly with 2 diffuse maps as well, regular and tiled.

I can do it in Blender, though using a bump-map for the tiles, which doesn't look great but it's much better than nothing. But Blender has 8 texture channels per material, and the 3DGS shaders I've looked at only use 1 or 2. It might be possible to finagle ARGB files with a custom format, if necessary, though that seems a bit crazy.

It should allow for smaller textures, like 2 at 512 instead of 1 at 2048.

The min/max is a slight problem with flattening the extremes, but keeping the tiled normal or bump map shallow is OK.

Or am I just cracking smoke?

Dave Heinemann, 2400 poly humanoid.