Understanding Normal Maps with Half life 2
 

I know a lot of people don't know too much about normal maps and since they're in a lot of games now I think this short clip will really help people get a better idea..... it shows how a normal map is generated in XSI and how extreme information can be applied to one single polygon.

It's pretty much a tech demo from half life 2 and you may have seen it, but I thought it was still pretty cool to see what people are doing with games these days..... check it out :)

It's a 56.24Mb file so if you're on dial up, you'll be around for a while.

Half life 2 normal map video

that is just some really cool stuff.
I was like WOW :confused: just one poly....lol.

(by the way.....i was like downloading at like 800kb/s.... just that that was insane as well lol)

from my understanding of the HL2 engine is that it doesnt use Normal maps. Its a very old engine. The Doom3 engine definatly supports normal maps, but that one was more specifically designed to handle interior level design.

the HL2 engine CAN use normalmaps
its just that it doesnt uses everywhere (in HL2) or even nowhere (even if it still can,and you can make a mod to it using normalmaps) in CSS.
But thats a designer choice not a limitation of the engine (and you notice it in frames per second: comparing DOOM3 where almost anything has a normalmap and goes at 34fps in my machine to HL2 that only uses it where it matters most and i get 78fps...)

the doom 3 game uses more bump maps than normal maps actually.

interesting... i actually couldnt unpack any bumpmap? but i in fact was able to see all the normalmaps and models?