Goliath the Thief

I've been caught in a whirlwind, at work. Multiple tasks due yesterday... you know what I mean. When I get home, I'm pretty tired and try to avoid using a computer, because 7 hours a day is a bit much for my brain. The only thing I've been doing since my last post was cursing at Maya 8, and hoping to have a spare moment to create my normal map for that fancy wall oil-lamp that imperatively needs one.

Of course I own Doom 3. And thanks for the tip, I'll be looking at this soon! And if someone has an additional way of making normal maps, I'd be happy to learn as many ways as possible.

Anyone here has experience with Normal Maps? I keep trying to make them in Maya 8.0, but they come out very bad. I think Maya has a hard time with normal maps, because when I apply them on my low-poly models, they stay the same, with very ugly black lines on them. It's making me crazy!

Hehe, I should give it a try, one of these days... Maya is all I know, and sooner or later I'm sure I'll have to expand the number of 3D apps that I can use.

Question ! Should my polygons be one-sided or double-sided? AND Should I prefer triangle polygons over quads?

Ok. I will have to look, read and learn about normal maps and how to make them.

I'm currently working on an adaptation of the wall oil lamp (http://www.mbmafrica.co.za/accessories/enlarge/o1c.htm), and I'm hitting the 2000 polys. On another thread, I've read that small objects should be around 250 polys. So how many polys should I go for, for a lamp?

Good, thanks for the explanations!

Oh! Great! But it also means that if a mod (let's say) stays 50 megs throughout 2 years of development, and every day a change has been made, then the space required will be ((365*2)*50) megs, is that right?

Question here! What exactly is SVN? From what I gather, it's some kind of FTP client? I will be able to upload and download files from a server, which is kinda HQ for TDM? ... I'll probably start working on the lamp models tomorrow.

YAY! I can't wait to work on that

Thanks! Maybe the texturing is not convincing because of the heavy use of "glow" and contrast. And the shader is a bit too glossy to my liking, actually. If possible, I'd like to have an "object request". I could show my modeling, UVing and texturing skills.

The codec for the movie is H.264 (IIRC). The latest Quicktime player should do the trick. And thanks for the comments for the clock. In fact, I had used a B/W photography as the inspiration of the modeling.

Thanks! I'm sure you'll love the gears