Standard wall:
Normal mapped wall:
As you can see I applied the Oblivion stonewall normal maps.
The first thing I noticed when I ran it, was that the walls were blatantly brighter than before (you cannot really see that in these shots) - I left some walls standard and some normal mapped. The normal mapped ones looked a bit out of place - too bright.
I'm no graphics expert, but the normal mapped stuff just seems brighter and more plastic-looking. Is this basically a downside of normal mapping? Is it really worth bothering with?
I normal mapped the horse too - guess what, the horse basically looked brighter and, again, sort of out of place.
Technically, I'd have to normal map everthing so that everything looks 'normal' compared to everything that is not normal mapped - they just look stupid together.
Some of you are graphically-minded. Do you think the normal mapped wall looks a lot better - do you prefer it?
I'm sort of thinking I'd save myself a lot of extra work by not normal mapping. Or does it all come down to lighting? Is lighting the key to making it look good?
Normal mapped wall:
As you can see I applied the Oblivion stonewall normal maps.
The first thing I noticed when I ran it, was that the walls were blatantly brighter than before (you cannot really see that in these shots) - I left some walls standard and some normal mapped. The normal mapped ones looked a bit out of place - too bright.
I'm no graphics expert, but the normal mapped stuff just seems brighter and more plastic-looking. Is this basically a downside of normal mapping? Is it really worth bothering with?
I normal mapped the horse too - guess what, the horse basically looked brighter and, again, sort of out of place.
Technically, I'd have to normal map everthing so that everything looks 'normal' compared to everything that is not normal mapped - they just look stupid together.
Some of you are graphically-minded. Do you think the normal mapped wall looks a lot better - do you prefer it?
I'm sort of thinking I'd save myself a lot of extra work by not normal mapping. Or does it all come down to lighting? Is lighting the key to making it look good?