Maya for 3D Printing - Rapid Prototyping
In this course we're going to look at something a little different, creating technically accurate 3D printed parts.
# 16 16-12-2009 , 12:25 AM
DonnieBrasco2069's Avatar
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Originally posted by ben hobden
ah yeah, that is really nice and subtle. By normal, i mean normal map. same as bump mapping really i guess, i think it works a slightly different way, but im no expert at all so i wouldnt take my word for it.

You seem really good are you quite new to maya then? whats the project for/about? apart from it being the enterprise.

Oh ok, I gotcha. Yeah from what I know normal and bump maps are pretty much the same thing, since bump maps use normals to calculate the direction of the bump. There MAY be subtle differences but I'm not sure exactly what they are.

I started learning Maya over the spring of this year. I started with a few classes at the Gnomon School (www.gnomonschool.com), but if it wasn't for my love of star trek, I wouldn't have taken it as far as I have. Right now I'm working on re-creating the launch scene from Star Trek I. It's hard when you want to render out 3 mins of footage and each FRAME takes 40 mins! I'm going to borrow a friends computer I think lol

What does your dragon look like? how's it coming?

# 17 16-12-2009 , 12:52 AM
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I think bump maps work in black and white whereas normal maps are in RGB colour space.. Ive not long been having a little play with zbrush, and in that you make normal maps to put in the bump slot of maya shaders, but you use the maps as 'tangent space normals', rather than 'bump'. Technically what the difference is i dont really know either.

The dragon is coming on slowly. Its gone in a direction of a whole scene which i hadnt really intended, and im not sure if im really into it, but im carrying on. might go back to one of the earlier stages at some point. Its under dino_chick in the wip section. It was originally kind of a dinosaur, until, i think it was stwert on here, said it was more like a dragon, so technically, thats what it now is..!..if thats any indication into how much preplanning has gone into it!

# 18 16-12-2009 , 01:45 AM
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a normal map contains 3 times as much info so you can use it for a myriad of things. most commonly its used to recreate lighting info on a low res mesh, something a bump map cant do. all a bump map does is bump the normal in one spot out, not change its direction in other ways or add more normals to the mesh.

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