Normal Mapping

Dear world,

I really like normal mapping. It's like cheating. You create a low-poly model that looks high poly for cheap. I mean initially you may have to create a high-poly mesh first, but that is fun too! Some of the cool tools I use for this are photoshop, xnormal, crazybump, and the nvidia normal map filter. Xnormal is free and the nvidia filter are free. I highly recommend them both. Photoshop is obviously not free, but you could use gimp for the of the post effects. Crazybump has a free beta for mac users and a short demo for windows users. It is quite the program and you can purchase it for under $100 bucks for personal use. This takes a photograph and converts it to a normal map, specular map, AO, and displacement map with settings! However, I am finding that I like to use the xnormal and nvidia filters in Photoshop. That way I can fine tune my map the way I would like it to be. Overall normal mapping is cool and everyone should look into it. Thank you.

-Max