Medieval Render
Community Forums/Graphic Chat/Medieval Render
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| As part of the collada export function I'm working on, ( nearly finished), there will be an option to average the normals for any shared vertex coords on a model surface. Using this option along with the displacement maps I'm creating will mean that rendering models in a 3D render will create smoother/seamless edges. This is a cinema4d render of some models exported using this export option and then a bit of photoshop on top to add in a couple of extra elements. To see the 1440 * 900 image, click on the image  |
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| Looks great. |
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| Looks great, cept for Darth Vader - he looks like a cardboard cutout. Is he the "extra element" you added in Photoshop by any chance? |
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| Ha ha :) Yes, he was the extra element, and a couple of other things. I thought he looked alright but on a second glance it does look a bit fake. |
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| Looks fantastic - very atmospheric. But yeah, the cardboard cutout spoils the scene a little. |
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| Looks visually impressive, even darth vader! |
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| Looks great, but wtf does this mean: there will be an option to average the normals for any shared vertex I'm very ignorant about 3D art ^^ I know about shared vertex and normals though, and it makes no sense. |
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| ...but wtf does this mean: there will be an option to average the normals for any shared vertex I'm very ignorant about 3D art ^^ I know about shared vertex and normals though, and it makes no sense. Let's take a cube for example. The corner verices could be considered as "shared" between 3 faces each. That means that each vertex of the cube has 3 normals (one for each face it's part of). This option would average those 3 (either by bringing them closer together, or merging them into 1 normal altogehter. I don't know how 6's system works). Also, I'm pretty sure every major 3D package has something similar to this. Most of the time you don't want those normals averaged. Perhaps only slightly adjusted. Averaging the normals works best with curved surfaces, and that kind of excludes medieval buildings :) A little explanation of why this is not quite right (I wish i had pictures to show this, but I hope it makes sense): Say you have a long piece of wood with a square section (a stretched cube if you may). With the normals separated, it lights up as it is supposed to. With the normals averaged, it LOOKS like it has a square section, but it LIGHTS UP like it has a round section. That's because instead of each side being defined separately, they're "smoothed" by averaging the edges. It may look right in some cases, but really wrong in others. Hope this helps :o) |
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| Spot on JIM, thats exactly right. If you're using the models for game development then you probably don't want to use this feature as it can cause the lighting on the model to look odd. But if you're interested in 3D rendering with displacement maps, then you would use this option. Here is an example. Below are two images showing the an opengl set up on the left and a render on the right. Each image has two of the same model, the model on the left uses normal averaging, the one on the right doesn't. As you can see on the rendered image, the model with the averaged normals doesn't have broken seam running down the edge.  |
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| Aha! That does make sense :) Doesn't cinema4d already have something like that though? |
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| There is a Weld tool in Cinema4D, but you have to weld each group of vertices separately which can take ages to do a whole bunch of models. Last edited 2011 |
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| That is fantastic, it almost looks painted (in the best sense of the word) rather than rendered! |
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