Ok, so, for my first organic model she came out suprisingly well, I'm quite proud of her. I've practiced long and hard and feel I can reproduce her, or something along her lines, relativly quickly. I know shes far from perfect and am not putting her up here for critiques, I'm putting her up here so you know where I am at ability wise. As I like to say, "At the moment I am dead smack in the middle of average". So now I am moving on to my next phase of learning: Texturing.

Now I think I understand the basics of getting color on the model. I went out and got GIMP, a very nice piece of software, and have an understanding of layers. The road block I seem to be hitting everywhere is this:

Everyone talks about Normal Maps and Shading, but there is really nothing out there on how to actually apply these to the model. I understand that Normal Maps are alot like bump mapping, correct me if I am wrong here please, and Bump maps are used in the gimp file that you paint to create a "bump" effect. which when you are done painting you then re apply that "texture" on the model after using the uv editor. (I've done this on a very basic level just to see the steps involved)

Now the question I have is:

I've created an awesome normal Map from a high Poly model. Do I now use that as a bump map under all my other layers to create a "relief"?

Is there anything else that I need, or should, do with GIMP other than paint my layers and use the Normal Map?

Does anyone else have any pointers?


Thanks for any input.
Tinv

that's some nice work there, especially for ur first organic model!

normal maps are applied as a seperate skin -- do not use them in the "colour" texture. a normal map shader will calculate extra smooth and realistic lighting based on the normal map, so it must be seperate. i believe it has to use the same UV's as the colour map, but i only have extra edition, so i cannot use shaders and haven't looked into this. i'm sure someone else will be able to help you out more. if you dont get any more helpful responses, ask about a normal map shader in the shader forum.

julz

ok, as far as first organic models come and go this one is pretty darn good. but try to create a better polyflow, that way it will look nicer both outside a game and it will give a better feel of animation in the game. But as i said: not too shabby for your first model