I’m watching as this is an area I know zip about. It does look like fun and so different than feature work. Of course now adays, seems one leads to the other. 
Were watching avidly. Perhaps its just no one wants to clutter up your tut thread with unnecessary remarks?
Though Ive been doing game model normal map work for some time now, I too am finding this unfolding narative captivating, as my workflow has been significantly different to yours, ReplicA. I came in on a project that had almost all the game models UVd, textured, bump mapped and generally finished, so I had to take the good bits of the bump maps and generate ZMapper normal maps that conform to those existing bump/RGB texture registration points. There were times when I so much wanted to re-do the UVs, but couldn`t. Conversely, there being extant bump maps I could use to convert to normal maps with th NVidia plugin saved me bucketloads of time and freed me from having to touch every single part of each model in Z-Brush.
Thanks for your time and effort,
Rory
Yeah, me too man. 
ahh thanks for the info man… yup I guess some details are better of done through Ps or scuplting them out. The saddle is looking much better rite now also its a better choice that u hav kept it seperately … yeah waiting for the final detailing to be given to it. The low poly looks gr8 alrite. Maybe u might jus as well get the whole model under 5k poly’s in the end 
… Rock on!
Don’t worry Rep, this is the main thread I’m following just now. Yesterday I was just busy all day and didn’t get a proper look here. I’m holding out to see your normal mapping process.
Killer Detail there man,I like the lowpoly too,how many tris ?
Dont worry about the replies man…I’m pretty sure that there are MANY ppl passing through his thread… 3600 views is pretty good for 4 days
What you are doing is very educational for us and at the same time I must say that this creature is your best one yet !!
keep the updates coming,we are waiting
Wow, thanks guys. I didn’t really mean no one was watching, or reading. It was a kind of attempt at self depricating humor. But I am glad to know I’m not just talking to myself now.
Rory_L, man, that sound like a tough job. I know uv’s are an art form unto thmselves, and I’m not much of an artist when it comes to them. I’m still learning, though. And thanks for the comments.
billrobertson42, Thanks, man.
Smoothy, Aaahhh, under 5k… I don’t know about that. He’s a mount, and pretty big. I’m thinking around 6k would be great for him. But I suppose I could try for 5k. We’ll see.
eboy, I know you’ve been following, most of the questions are coming from you, and those questions are helping me clarify things to people who are reading, and not replying. That’s cool by me, it helps ensure this thing is understandable. Normal mapping process is not far away, so I’ll try and explain that part in as much detail as possible.
sriram, I had no idea this has only taken 4 days. I thought it was a lot longer than that, more like almost a week and a half. I’m actually surprised it’s only been 4 days.
Well, I got all but 2 parts of the mesh in their 5 million poly form, from ZB to Max 9. I’ll be trying again later, but for now, I’ll be doing the final passes over the mesh in ZB. After that, it’ll be normal mappin time. The other normal maps were just a test, to see how the uv’s were working.
Anyway, thanks a lot for the comments, everyone, and I’ll have more as soon as I can. Thanks for looking.
Thanks to the efforts of Sriram, I got that vid of the begining of the very first zb pass for you guys to check out. It’s not much, but hopefully I’ll be able to make up for it with my next model.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2006/12/8/480984/BladeWorm-Vid_01.mov
Still working on the detail pass, gotta find a way to get this stuff into max. I think I’ll have to part it out, and render seperate normal maps, then stitch them together in Photoshop. I’ll update when I can.
That was a killer video man 
I ALWAYS wanted to know about the polygroups stuff,but never tried it…thx for making it look so easy 
Btw,can you tell me the advantage of creating those polygroups in zbrush ?? Other than the fancy colors they seem to have…do they allow for importing the meshes as split parts into max or something ?
Great video again,its good to see that you’ve pretty much got most of the 1st pass done in 15 mins 
Waiting for more
Thanks, Sriram, glad you liked it.
the polygroups thing does allow you to export the mesh piece by piece a lot easier. It also allows you to hide parts of the mesh in ZB easier. You hold down CTRL, and SHIFT, then click the polygroup you wanna work on alone, and the rest are hidden. Then you can CTRL SHIFT click on 3d space, and the rest will come back. Or you can do the same thing, only click on the visible mesh, and it’ll hide the mesh you click, and unhide the rest.
It’s REALLY helpful when the polycount gets high, cause you get better feedback.
I’m still working on getting the mesh into Max, I’m making some progress, but the going is slow. The final pass on the high res is just about done, I decided to go a different route on the skin textures, and not go nuts with alphas. Just give it some subtle wrinkles all over. I will go nuts with the alphas on the claw/foot areas, though. Make 'em kinda crab-like.
Updates soonish.
Hey Rep well done with the vid. The quality is very good.
Also I’m glad you have considered parting out the model, generating normal maps and stitching back together in photoshop as this is what I’m planning on doing with mine. I was wondering if this would be a good idea, which I reckon it is
Yeah, man, it’s looking like I don’t really have much of a choice. I can’t get the model to import in anything. Max8 craps out right after the body’s imported, max 9 chokes really close to importing the whole model. I suppose I could try and get it to work in ZB, but I’m not really counting on it. I’ll try it anyway, and just keep photoshop handy for when ZB dies. Yes, I got ZB to die on me 5 times so far today.
I just love technical problems while I’m trying to show people how I work. It’s the best.
Dude, I made a career out of solving technical problems, and they get every penny’s worth! Or is it, I get every penny I’m worth? Whatever…
Don’t know much about Max, other than it’s hell to work with. Had a project a few years ago handed off and I must say I really developed a dislike to Max, really, really!!!
Not that any other app is perfect, or I’d have been without work alot!
Here’s to hoping you get this wrangled!
Hahahaaa, Jason, I sometimes agree with you. I hate these poly limits, and technical bs so much… But when it behaves, I love it.
Good news in the war effort, I got the normal map to work in ZB on the new low poly mesh! YAY!! I just have to render out the saddle and horns normals and then I can move on to the blankets, belts, and everything else. But at least I don’t have to worry about the 5 mil poly import bull**** anymore. I’m so happy about that.
Keeping in line with a workflow walkthrough, I’ll explain what I did to get the normal map to work in ZB.
First off, I loaded the ztl of the creature into ZB (duh). I then went to it’s lowest subd, opened up zmapper, and in the projection tab, hit, “capture current mesh”. After a little bit of thinking, it captures it. You can tell cause up top, it says, “Mesh captured successfully”, and there’s a lot of red lines poking out of the mesh. Exit zmapper, (boy am I getting tired of all the “Z”'s in the names of these things) go to the tool menu, and clone your mesh. The clone is automatically selected, so go into the geometry drop down, and delete the higher divisions. Go to the import drop down in the same menu, and import your other version of the low poly model. Once that bad boy’s imported, go back into zmapper, choose the settings you want, and hit render normal map. The high res mesh from your ztool will be projected onto the newly imported low poly, and you now have a normal map.
If things go wrong during this process, I have no idea how to fix them. It’s actually quite rare I get it to work at all, so I’m very happy it did today. There’s a thread on zmapper and all it’s quirks in the questions and troubleshooting area of this board, I advise you go check it out.
I’ll have updates as soon as the normal maps are done rendering, and I’ll talk about how I stitch them together in photoshop, too.
Alrighty, back to business!!
After taking the normal map of the body I got from ZB, and the one of the straps, and other things I got from Max, and putting them both in Photoshop, I got these results.
[attach=45653]BladeWorm-Max_09.jpg[/attach]
A little bit low res looking, but not bad for a game model. The low res look would go away if I were to make seperate uv sets for the armor, and all that, but I wanted to stick with one set for the whole thing. Nice, and perfectly in game legal.
Here’s what you need for rendering normal maps in Max.
First of all, you need to select your low poly mesh, and put a projection modifier on it. Open up the Cage drop down menu, and un-tick, Always Update. It’s a pain in the ass, and does no one any good. There’s also a section to select your high res mesh(es). Just stick to the ones you need right now, if you’re planning to do multiple maps. If you add all your meshes, and only need a few, there will be errors on the map you render. Turn on Shaded, and it is time to start adjusting!
You want to get all of the high res mesh into the shaded part of the projection, but stay as close to the mesh as possible. With organic meshes, that’s not hard to do at all. With mechanical stuff, however, it can be tricky. There’s a great tutorial on this stuff in the unfortunately titled, www.poopinmymouth.com. Don’t worry, nothing bad is there, it’s just a bunch of really good 3d tutorials. Another thing you want to avoid while editing the cage is having the cage penetrate other parts of itself. This will cause errors in your map as well, and it just sounds weird.
Now for the settings I used in Max for normal mapping. First, of course, you gotta enable projection. This let’s max know that there is a projection modifier on your low poly model, and to use it to generate the maps. Right next to that is the Options button, hit that, and enable supersampling. The default max 2.5 star seems to work the best for me. Exit the options, and get back to the render to texture dialogue. Down a ways is the little menu that lets you tell max what kind of maps you wanna render. Hit the Add button, and choose NormalsMap. You can pick a place you want the map to be saved to, and just under that, is the resolution options. I go to 2048, as it’s what UE3 uses, and if I need it another size, it’s easier and better to down res a map than it is to up res, or render a new one. Under that is another bit of options to set. Just tick Output Into Source, and Render to Files Only. That’s it, you’re ready to render your map!!
Here’s what I did to bring the 2 maps together into one. Since the body was the biggest part, looked the best, and was underneath the straps and things, I kept that as the base layer. The other normal map was to go on top of it, and everything would be rosey. But there was a bit of a snag. Max felt it necessary to render parts of the low poly model on to the normal map, and there was artifacts all over the place. This means clean up time.
I’ll say this first, I am no photoshop wiz, so I’m certain there’s a better way to do this. That being said, I went ahead and did things the only way I know how, the hard way. I selected the parts of the map I wanted to keep, staying as close as I could to the real edges of those parts, hit select invers, and deleted the excess. Of course, I couldn’t make perfect selections, so I had to go back, and erase what I missed by hand, trying not to get into the areas I wanted to keep. It took forever, but the results are not too bad.
There’s still more to go, I gotta get the armor and blankies, and all that normal mapped and ready to go. After that should be texturing, and there’s a trick I picked up from reading the Epic workflow article. So keep your projection modifier on your model for that bit of info.
More as soon as I can.
And here he is with his stuff. Not too bad, but still needs work. The pocket is kinda upside down, and there’s a couple of other issues, but nothing a little photoshop love won’t cure.
Texturing will come soon. My niece’s b-day is coming up, and I’ll be taking off for that, and probably x-mas, soon. Don’t know when, and don’t know for how long. Hopefully I’ll have most of this done by then.
So my blade Worm is just about ready for texturing. I’m liking the way the normal map looks, I really like that I got it all in one map, the polycount isn’t bad at 6113 tri’s, and I’m overall just happy with the way it’s come out so far.
So here’s a little trick to help with getting everything started for textures. Since a lot of the stuff on him is normal mapped, and not really there, I’ll need to be able to color those parts differently than the rest. The way I used to do it was by selecting those areas with the polygon tool, new layer, yada yada. After reading an article on Epics workflow, however, I found a much better way.
Since the projection modifier is still on him, I can use that to render another map. This time a diffuse map. I could probably go crazy with shaders, and mix things up, but I don’t wanna do that. All I want to do is, find some colors that are painfully obvious, and will show where the seperation in the map should go. I chose bright red, and bright blue for this. Both are solid colors. After rendering out the map, it’s much easier to see where one thing ends, and another begins. Now selections in photoshop are much easier. So much easier in fact, I could use the magic wand tool to make the selections, and it would still look good.
All I have to do now, is come up with a decent skin color, and do all the basic texturing stuff. The hard part of figuring what goes where is already done for me.
If you need help on that, hit me with questions. For now, though, I’m gonna take a little break, then come back and texture this dude.
The lowpoly looks great man !
Looking forward to the texturing process
Looking great man, thanks for the effort too, really apppreciate it… got to learn new things… . Now waiting to see it get textured also can we see the final low poly wire frame?
Hey Rep. I think the normal map and low poly model is spot on I wouldn’t mind having a look at the map you rendered off with its red and blue areas 
Been a very good read so far.