Question about lighting and actors

Tabulanis · Post by **Tabulanis** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 4:59 am

ok I got normal mapping to work well. But now that I have a nice actor I found a new problem. As I look at this guy I notice that if I turn to the right or left the light falloff is really screwed up. In fact it turns his face into a skull thing. See shot...

Now he looks fine in every other program I have used to veiw the normal mapping. and with no normal mapping at all this still happens. it looks less like a skull but same thing. Is there a problem with the lighting?
Now also this guy is a pawn and the ambiant lighting is at 120, 120 ,120 so shoudlnt this not be possible? I mean dark sure but black? I have stencle shadows on in the shot but it still happens with them off. Is there something I should be doing before I export the models to make this not happen?
Smoothing groups or something?

The model is 2600 polys most of them in the face.

The lights in the level are 3 lights set next to each other for a soft shadowing effect. Like I said stencle shadows on or off same problem.

When I ran a normal mapping test on a rotating cube I noticed that the bak side of the cube that was origionaly turned away from the lights kept a dark look even when it rotated into the lights. Mabey that has something to do with it.

Thanks help the help in advance.

jonas · Post by **jonas** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 4:28 am

Nice model! Ew, those black area's look pretty bad. Are you modelling that in milkshape? If so are any of the faces black in milkshape before you apply the textures?

GD1 · Post by **GD1** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 8:45 pm

its because of how RF calculates lighting for the normal maps. it can only be lit by one light at a time and the calculations for that are static at best. also, it only calculates light direction not distance, so the object will still be lit when it is well out of the lights range.

honestly, i prefer sticking to baked lighting and ditching the normal maps when i work with RF.

Spyrewolf · Post by **Spyrewolf** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 9:49 pm

this could be the normal maps, try this,

i think your normals need to be inverted, this produce the black shades you seem to be having on the face,

got photoshop?
if so....Are you using the Nvidia Normalmap plugin for Photoshop, if not download that and there is an option for inverting normals

this should fix your problem, your getting shadows where light is and light where shadow is.

Tabulanis · Post by **Tabulanis** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 3:00 am

Yeah I tried that theI have the plugin and I have done it all possible ways.
Thanks though