Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins

[airflamesred]

you're a star John, thank you. Normal mapping seems to be the norm these days. My daughter has been playing Assassins creed of late - pretty impressive. X normal seems real easy.
That would be a good use of that plugin. Have you noticed it won't replicate on the last vert in the line?

[airflamesred]

Hi Folks
Decided I'm not swapping to ver 3, so made the most of plugins for 2 and found this. Ben will know this as bridge from blender. I've thrown it about a bit and it;s pretty substantial. Select 2 edges and it creates a polygon in between. Much quicker than create face. It does have to be adjacent lines to work in bulk, but I'm mighty impressed.
It's not a call for translation John, just the D/L page is a bit confusing and so my reason for posting.

[HwitVlf]

That tool will save me a lot of time since I often edit the polygon structure after I complete a mesh. Thanks for pointing out these helpful plugins. I translated it - selfish reason since it makes it easier for me to use.

[dmpdesign]

Sorry I am coming into this very late, I did not read all of your posts but if you need help generating normal/height/spec maps I can probably assist you with other tools other than meta. ‎  It is what I do for a living these days :D

Anyhow, if you are fabricating the proper height map, use this program here to create a good normal:

https://neotextureedit.sourceforge.net/download.html

If you dont mind, can I see how you are constructing the normal map now, and are you basing it off a height/bump map texture?

[airflamesred]

Thanks for the link Todd. Personally, all I want to do bake out a high poly and onto a lower poly figure. In the dark a bit atm.

A couple more plugins for you John. Vertex snap - drag a vert onto another. please note it doesn't weld
The other one measures the lengh of a line/s - both command panel

[airflamesred]

Sorry folks forgot to add the file!
My desktop seems to have some issues atm - 'm guessing its the graphics card. So using V3 on this laptop. Although the plugins work it seems to be very buggy - either vista or the awkward bit I'm attempting to model - most annoying. Anyone else having issues?

[HwitVlf]

Thanks Todd! Neotexture looks like it will be excellent for making textures. My current photo editor can do most of the same effects, but it's WAY less user friendly and no 3D preview of course. Neotexture seems like it would be good for making multiple, variations of a single texture for landscaping or such.

Mark, I tried using a bump map in Metasequoia v3 and couldn't get it to work either. I wonder why Metasequoia has had a slot for bump maps for a long time even though they don't seem to function. Is it possible that the bump map info is saved in the MQO, but just not rendered in the preview? Unfortunately, there don't seem to be many decent model format converters for meta.

[Verdite]

If you'd like i can explain how you can make a normal map manually along with the bump map.

[airflamesred]

John , The bump map slot has worked from a painting aspect its just direct X can now display it. You'll need directx 9 or above, installed and and 'on' in the view panel (under command) and 'show precisely' ticked on the view menu drop down.

Ben, Yes please.

The issue for me is that with direct x on almost all the colour goes from the screen.

[Verdite]

Well, i started doing a step by step guide in blender to show both the ambient occlusion and normal map generation, though the model i was using turned out to have the wrong type of map for certain parts of it (front projection for a mesh including front and back faces overlapping) so the baking was too jagged.

So instead, use xNormal. Its a fantastic program that lets you render your images in a really nice viewer where you can adjust lighting and so on.
Where it says high-poly meshes right click and import mesh.
Do the same for the low poly meshes.

In baking options, specify your output filename and type (like meta's export function) then select what you want to generate, normals, occlusion, height maps.
There are 17 options!

Fix the edge padding, and the bucket size, it seems the higher the bucket the longer the render takes.

Now hit that generate maps button! Your files will come out with the specified output files name and a suffix such as _normal or _occlusion where you stated.
If you are looking for your screenies you took in the 3d viewer, they will be in your 'documents' library under xNormal > screenshots.

Heres my skeleton (untextured) enjoying the shadows.