I'm learning to make normal mapped models in Lightwave, using "Normal Map Create" by Marvin Landis. I thought I'd make a post in the hopes that it'll help others progress faster than I did. If anyone's got information to add to this, feel free.

Goliath's "Modeling and texturing in Doom 3" tutorial is pretty good. It can be found here: http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1884&highlight=goliath+modeling
I've also followed through the UV mapping tutorials from Lightwave's built-in help section: in Lightwave, hit "F1" to launch it, then search for "UV tutorial".
It's also been very helpful to look at Id's UV maps.

Silly Problems I Ran Into (and their solutions)
Problem- I made a UV map and saved my object file. When I reopened the file, I couldn't see the UV map, even if I set one of the views to "UV Texture".
Solution- Press F8 to open the Vertex Maps Panel. Select your saved map from the Texture section.

Problem- Model meshes appear in Doom 3, but are totally black. In the console, it says: WARNING: Couldn't load image: <insert name here>.
Solution- This seems to happen when the material definition's name doesn't match the name of the model's surface.

Problem- Model meshes appear textured in Doom 3, but there are noticeable seams in the normal map.
Solution- The seams appear at places where the UV map isn't continuous. All I've learned to do is hide UV seams whenever possible. It's also a good idea to plan object shapes with UV mapping in mind.

Unanswered Questions
I haven't tinkered with Doom 3's built in "renderbump" command yet. How does this compare to Normal Map Create?

When a low detail mesh has extremely high angles between polygons, the plugin "breaks" at the edge instead of rendering a continuous surface. There's a "Cutoff Angle" setting in the plugin's interface, but it's already set at the highest level. Are there workarounds?

The d3 rendermap from what i hear is very kewl you actually see each pixel of the model or triangle of the model being built in front of you.

Caution, if that's the same plugin we used for a while, then it's a bit weird.

Often, the normals would be reversed in D3, that is to say, things that should be indented were sticking out.

We now ONLY use renderbumpflat for textures. It's designed for D3, it must work alright!

In Lightwave 8.x you got 5 small buttons in the bottom right corner, labelled like "W" "T" "M" and so on.. click on the T button, the you can select all your UV sets in the box on his right. When you select it, lighwave automatically display the uv in the "UV layout" viewport. It's basically the same as you said (opening menu with F8) but more fast.



It's not a problem. Actually, this is the method to assign a doom3 material to a surface on your model. If you don't do it, obviously the model won't work.



Yeah, UV's are famous for this kind of things..


DooM3 renderbump it's much slower then the "normal create" plugin, but honestly, in my expeerience, my best normal maps are done with DooM3 built in renderer.

Use the Doom renderbump. THe main benefit is that it treats intersecting pieces of separate geometry as a single mesh, which is far superior the ATI normal mapper plugin for lightwave which will often ignore small pieces of geometry, like the buttons on a jacket or the metal rings on a boot where the laces go through.

Note for anyone else learning to make high detail models with LightWave:

I'm more comfortable with Doom 3's RenderBump now. As people above have said, it really does turn out wonderful results. The smoothness and clarity of the results is wonderful!
I find NormalMapCreate useful for creating quick test maps, because it's a little more user friendly and renders faster than Doom 3. Once the model's done, I always take it to Doom 3 for the final normal map.

Thanks for all the help, people!

I'm learning to make normal mapped models in Lightwave, using "Normal Map Create" by Marvin Landis. I thought I'd make a post in the hopes that it'll help others progress faster than I did. If anyone's got information to add to this, feel free.

Goliath's "Modeling and texturing in Doom 3" tutorial is pretty good. It can be found here: http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1884&highlight=goliath+modeling
I've also followed through the UV mapping tutorials from Lightwave's built-in help section: in Lightwave, hit "F1" to launch it, then search for "UV tutorial".
It's also been very helpful to look at Id's UV maps.

Silly Problems I Ran Into (and their solutions)
Problem- I made a UV map and saved my object file. When I reopened the file, I couldn't see the UV map, even if I set one of the views to "UV Texture".
Solution- Press F8 to open the Vertex Maps Panel. Select your saved map from the Texture section.

Problem- Model meshes appear in Doom 3, but are totally black. In the console, it says: WARNING: Couldn't load image: <insert name here>.
Solution- This seems to happen when the material definition's name doesn't match the name of the model's surface.

Problem- Model meshes appear textured in Doom 3, but there are noticeable seams in the normal map.
Solution- The seams appear at places where the UV map isn't continuous. All I've learned to do is hide UV seams whenever possible. It's also a good idea to plan object shapes with UV mapping in mind.

Unanswered Questions
I haven't tinkered with Doom 3's built in "renderbump" command yet. How does this compare to Normal Map Create?

When a low detail mesh has extremely high angles between polygons, the plugin "breaks" at the edge instead of rendering a continuous surface. There's a "Cutoff Angle" setting in the plugin's interface, but it's already set at the highest level. Are there workarounds?

The d3 rendermap from what i hear is very kewl you actually see each pixel of the model or triangle of the model being built in front of you.

Caution, if that's the same plugin we used for a while, then it's a bit weird.

Often, the normals would be reversed in D3, that is to say, things that should be indented were sticking out.

We now ONLY use renderbumpflat for textures. It's designed for D3, it must work alright!

In Lightwave 8.x you got 5 small buttons in the bottom right corner, labelled like "W" "T" "M" and so on.. click on the T button, the you can select all your UV sets in the box on his right. When you select it, lighwave automatically display the uv in the "UV layout" viewport. It's basically the same as you said (opening menu with F8) but more fast.



It's not a problem. Actually, this is the method to assign a doom3 material to a surface on your model. If you don't do it, obviously the model won't work.



Yeah, UV's are famous for this kind of things..


DooM3 renderbump it's much slower then the "normal create" plugin, but honestly, in my expeerience, my best normal maps are done with DooM3 built in renderer.

Use the Doom renderbump. THe main benefit is that it treats intersecting pieces of separate geometry as a single mesh, which is far superior the ATI normal mapper plugin for lightwave which will often ignore small pieces of geometry, like the buttons on a jacket or the metal rings on a boot where the laces go through.

Note for anyone else learning to make high detail models with LightWave:

I'm more comfortable with Doom 3's RenderBump now. As people above have said, it really does turn out wonderful results. The smoothness and clarity of the results is wonderful!
I find NormalMapCreate useful for creating quick test maps, because it's a little more user friendly and renders faster than Doom 3. Once the model's done, I always take it to Doom 3 for the final normal map.

Thanks for all the help, people!

I'm learning to make normal mapped models in Lightwave, using "Normal Map Create" by Marvin Landis. I thought I'd make a post in the hopes that it'll help others progress faster than I did. If anyone's got information to add to this, feel free.

Goliath's "Modeling and texturing in Doom 3" tutorial is pretty good. It can be found here: http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1884&highlight=goliath+modeling
I've also followed through the UV mapping tutorials from Lightwave's built-in help section: in Lightwave, hit "F1" to launch it, then search for "UV tutorial".
It's also been very helpful to look at Id's UV maps.

Silly Problems I Ran Into (and their solutions)
Problem- I made a UV map and saved my object file. When I reopened the file, I couldn't see the UV map, even if I set one of the views to "UV Texture".
Solution- Press F8 to open the Vertex Maps Panel. Select your saved map from the Texture section.

Problem- Model meshes appear in Doom 3, but are totally black. In the console, it says: WARNING: Couldn't load image: <insert name here>.
Solution- This seems to happen when the material definition's name doesn't match the name of the model's surface.

Problem- Model meshes appear textured in Doom 3, but there are noticeable seams in the normal map.
Solution- The seams appear at places where the UV map isn't continuous. All I've learned to do is hide UV seams whenever possible. It's also a good idea to plan object shapes with UV mapping in mind.

Unanswered Questions
I haven't tinkered with Doom 3's built in "renderbump" command yet. How does this compare to Normal Map Create?

When a low detail mesh has extremely high angles between polygons, the plugin "breaks" at the edge instead of rendering a continuous surface. There's a "Cutoff Angle" setting in the plugin's interface, but it's already set at the highest level. Are there workarounds?

The d3 rendermap from what i hear is very kewl you actually see each pixel of the model or triangle of the model being built in front of you.

Caution, if that's the same plugin we used for a while, then it's a bit weird.

Often, the normals would be reversed in D3, that is to say, things that should be indented were sticking out.

We now ONLY use renderbumpflat for textures. It's designed for D3, it must work alright!

In Lightwave 8.x you got 5 small buttons in the bottom right corner, labelled like "W" "T" "M" and so on.. click on the T button, the you can select all your UV sets in the box on his right. When you select it, lighwave automatically display the uv in the "UV layout" viewport. It's basically the same as you said (opening menu with F8) but more fast.



It's not a problem. Actually, this is the method to assign a doom3 material to a surface on your model. If you don't do it, obviously the model won't work.



Yeah, UV's are famous for this kind of things..


DooM3 renderbump it's much slower then the "normal create" plugin, but honestly, in my expeerience, my best normal maps are done with DooM3 built in renderer.

Use the Doom renderbump. THe main benefit is that it treats intersecting pieces of separate geometry as a single mesh, which is far superior the ATI normal mapper plugin for lightwave which will often ignore small pieces of geometry, like the buttons on a jacket or the metal rings on a boot where the laces go through.

Note for anyone else learning to make high detail models with LightWave:

I'm more comfortable with Doom 3's RenderBump now. As people above have said, it really does turn out wonderful results. The smoothness and clarity of the results is wonderful!
I find NormalMapCreate useful for creating quick test maps, because it's a little more user friendly and renders faster than Doom 3. Once the model's done, I always take it to Doom 3 for the final normal map.

Thanks for all the help, people!

I'm learning to make normal mapped models in Lightwave, using "Normal Map Create" by Marvin Landis. I thought I'd make a post in the hopes that it'll help others progress faster than I did. If anyone's got information to add to this, feel free.

Goliath's "Modeling and texturing in Doom 3" tutorial is pretty good. It can be found here: http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1884&highlight=goliath+modeling
I've also followed through the UV mapping tutorials from Lightwave's built-in help section: in Lightwave, hit "F1" to launch it, then search for "UV tutorial".
It's also been very helpful to look at Id's UV maps.

Silly Problems I Ran Into (and their solutions)
Problem- I made a UV map and saved my object file. When I reopened the file, I couldn't see the UV map, even if I set one of the views to "UV Texture".
Solution- Press F8 to open the Vertex Maps Panel. Select your saved map from the Texture section.

Problem- Model meshes appear in Doom 3, but are totally black. In the console, it says: WARNING: Couldn't load image: <insert name here>.
Solution- This seems to happen when the material definition's name doesn't match the name of the model's surface.

Problem- Model meshes appear textured in Doom 3, but there are noticeable seams in the normal map.
Solution- The seams appear at places where the UV map isn't continuous. All I've learned to do is hide UV seams whenever possible. It's also a good idea to plan object shapes with UV mapping in mind.

Unanswered Questions
I haven't tinkered with Doom 3's built in "renderbump" command yet. How does this compare to Normal Map Create?

When a low detail mesh has extremely high angles between polygons, the plugin "breaks" at the edge instead of rendering a continuous surface. There's a "Cutoff Angle" setting in the plugin's interface, but it's already set at the highest level. Are there workarounds?

The d3 rendermap from what i hear is very kewl you actually see each pixel of the model or triangle of the model being built in front of you.

Caution, if that's the same plugin we used for a while, then it's a bit weird.

Often, the normals would be reversed in D3, that is to say, things that should be indented were sticking out.

We now ONLY use renderbumpflat for textures. It's designed for D3, it must work alright!

In Lightwave 8.x you got 5 small buttons in the bottom right corner, labelled like "W" "T" "M" and so on.. click on the T button, the you can select all your UV sets in the box on his right. When you select it, lighwave automatically display the uv in the "UV layout" viewport. It's basically the same as you said (opening menu with F8) but more fast.



It's not a problem. Actually, this is the method to assign a doom3 material to a surface on your model. If you don't do it, obviously the model won't work.



Yeah, UV's are famous for this kind of things..


DooM3 renderbump it's much slower then the "normal create" plugin, but honestly, in my expeerience, my best normal maps are done with DooM3 built in renderer.

Use the Doom renderbump. THe main benefit is that it treats intersecting pieces of separate geometry as a single mesh, which is far superior the ATI normal mapper plugin for lightwave which will often ignore small pieces of geometry, like the buttons on a jacket or the metal rings on a boot where the laces go through.

Note for anyone else learning to make high detail models with LightWave:

I'm more comfortable with Doom 3's RenderBump now. As people above have said, it really does turn out wonderful results. The smoothness and clarity of the results is wonderful!
I find NormalMapCreate useful for creating quick test maps, because it's a little more user friendly and renders faster than Doom 3. Once the model's done, I always take it to Doom 3 for the final normal map.

Thanks for all the help, people!

I'm learning to make normal mapped models in Lightwave, using "Normal Map Create" by Marvin Landis. I thought I'd make a post in the hopes that it'll help others progress faster than I did. If anyone's got information to add to this, feel free.

Goliath's "Modeling and texturing in Doom 3" tutorial is pretty good. It can be found here: http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1884&highlight=goliath+modeling
I've also followed through the UV mapping tutorials from Lightwave's built-in help section: in Lightwave, hit "F1" to launch it, then search for "UV tutorial".
It's also been very helpful to look at Id's UV maps.

Silly Problems I Ran Into (and their solutions)
Problem- I made a UV map and saved my object file. When I reopened the file, I couldn't see the UV map, even if I set one of the views to "UV Texture".
Solution- Press F8 to open the Vertex Maps Panel. Select your saved map from the Texture section.

Problem- Model meshes appear in Doom 3, but are totally black. In the console, it says: WARNING: Couldn't load image: <insert name here>.
Solution- This seems to happen when the material definition's name doesn't match the name of the model's surface.

Problem- Model meshes appear textured in Doom 3, but there are noticeable seams in the normal map.
Solution- The seams appear at places where the UV map isn't continuous. All I've learned to do is hide UV seams whenever possible. It's also a good idea to plan object shapes with UV mapping in mind.

Unanswered Questions
I haven't tinkered with Doom 3's built in "renderbump" command yet. How does this compare to Normal Map Create?

When a low detail mesh has extremely high angles between polygons, the plugin "breaks" at the edge instead of rendering a continuous surface. There's a "Cutoff Angle" setting in the plugin's interface, but it's already set at the highest level. Are there workarounds?

The d3 rendermap from what i hear is very kewl you actually see each pixel of the model or triangle of the model being built in front of you.

Caution, if that's the same plugin we used for a while, then it's a bit weird.

Often, the normals would be reversed in D3, that is to say, things that should be indented were sticking out.

We now ONLY use renderbumpflat for textures. It's designed for D3, it must work alright!

In Lightwave 8.x you got 5 small buttons in the bottom right corner, labelled like "W" "T" "M" and so on.. click on the T button, the you can select all your UV sets in the box on his right. When you select it, lighwave automatically display the uv in the "UV layout" viewport. It's basically the same as you said (opening menu with F8) but more fast.



It's not a problem. Actually, this is the method to assign a doom3 material to a surface on your model. If you don't do it, obviously the model won't work.



Yeah, UV's are famous for this kind of things..


DooM3 renderbump it's much slower then the "normal create" plugin, but honestly, in my expeerience, my best normal maps are done with DooM3 built in renderer.

Use the Doom renderbump. THe main benefit is that it treats intersecting pieces of separate geometry as a single mesh, which is far superior the ATI normal mapper plugin for lightwave which will often ignore small pieces of geometry, like the buttons on a jacket or the metal rings on a boot where the laces go through.

Note for anyone else learning to make high detail models with LightWave:

I'm more comfortable with Doom 3's RenderBump now. As people above have said, it really does turn out wonderful results. The smoothness and clarity of the results is wonderful!
I find NormalMapCreate useful for creating quick test maps, because it's a little more user friendly and renders faster than Doom 3. Once the model's done, I always take it to Doom 3 for the final normal map.

Thanks for all the help, people!

I'm learning to make normal mapped models in Lightwave, using "Normal Map Create" by Marvin Landis. I thought I'd make a post in the hopes that it'll help others progress faster than I did. If anyone's got information to add to this, feel free.

Goliath's "Modeling and texturing in Doom 3" tutorial is pretty good. It can be found here: http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1884&highlight=goliath+modeling
I've also followed through the UV mapping tutorials from Lightwave's built-in help section: in Lightwave, hit "F1" to launch it, then search for "UV tutorial".
It's also been very helpful to look at Id's UV maps.

Silly Problems I Ran Into (and their solutions)
Problem- I made a UV map and saved my object file. When I reopened the file, I couldn't see the UV map, even if I set one of the views to "UV Texture".
Solution- Press F8 to open the Vertex Maps Panel. Select your saved map from the Texture section.

Problem- Model meshes appear in Doom 3, but are totally black. In the console, it says: WARNING: Couldn't load image: <insert name here>.
Solution- This seems to happen when the material definition's name doesn't match the name of the model's surface.

Problem- Model meshes appear textured in Doom 3, but there are noticeable seams in the normal map.
Solution- The seams appear at places where the UV map isn't continuous. All I've learned to do is hide UV seams whenever possible. It's also a good idea to plan object shapes with UV mapping in mind.

Unanswered Questions
I haven't tinkered with Doom 3's built in "renderbump" command yet. How does this compare to Normal Map Create?

When a low detail mesh has extremely high angles between polygons, the plugin "breaks" at the edge instead of rendering a continuous surface. There's a "Cutoff Angle" setting in the plugin's interface, but it's already set at the highest level. Are there workarounds?

The d3 rendermap from what i hear is very kewl you actually see each pixel of the model or triangle of the model being built in front of you.

Caution, if that's the same plugin we used for a while, then it's a bit weird.

Often, the normals would be reversed in D3, that is to say, things that should be indented were sticking out.

We now ONLY use renderbumpflat for textures. It's designed for D3, it must work alright!

In Lightwave 8.x you got 5 small buttons in the bottom right corner, labelled like "W" "T" "M" and so on.. click on the T button, the you can select all your UV sets in the box on his right. When you select it, lighwave automatically display the uv in the "UV layout" viewport. It's basically the same as you said (opening menu with F8) but more fast.



It's not a problem. Actually, this is the method to assign a doom3 material to a surface on your model. If you don't do it, obviously the model won't work.



Yeah, UV's are famous for this kind of things..


DooM3 renderbump it's much slower then the "normal create" plugin, but honestly, in my expeerience, my best normal maps are done with DooM3 built in renderer.

Use the Doom renderbump. THe main benefit is that it treats intersecting pieces of separate geometry as a single mesh, which is far superior the ATI normal mapper plugin for lightwave which will often ignore small pieces of geometry, like the buttons on a jacket or the metal rings on a boot where the laces go through.

Note for anyone else learning to make high detail models with LightWave:

I'm more comfortable with Doom 3's RenderBump now. As people above have said, it really does turn out wonderful results. The smoothness and clarity of the results is wonderful!
I find NormalMapCreate useful for creating quick test maps, because it's a little more user friendly and renders faster than Doom 3. Once the model's done, I always take it to Doom 3 for the final normal map.

Thanks for all the help, people!

I'm learning to make normal mapped models in Lightwave, using "Normal Map Create" by Marvin Landis. I thought I'd make a post in the hopes that it'll help others progress faster than I did. If anyone's got information to add to this, feel free.

Goliath's "Modeling and texturing in Doom 3" tutorial is pretty good. It can be found here: http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1884&highlight=goliath+modeling
I've also followed through the UV mapping tutorials from Lightwave's built-in help section: in Lightwave, hit "F1" to launch it, then search for "UV tutorial".
It's also been very helpful to look at Id's UV maps.

Silly Problems I Ran Into (and their solutions)
Problem- I made a UV map and saved my object file. When I reopened the file, I couldn't see the UV map, even if I set one of the views to "UV Texture".
Solution- Press F8 to open the Vertex Maps Panel. Select your saved map from the Texture section.

Problem- Model meshes appear in Doom 3, but are totally black. In the console, it says: WARNING: Couldn't load image: <insert name here>.
Solution- This seems to happen when the material definition's name doesn't match the name of the model's surface.

Problem- Model meshes appear textured in Doom 3, but there are noticeable seams in the normal map.
Solution- The seams appear at places where the UV map isn't continuous. All I've learned to do is hide UV seams whenever possible. It's also a good idea to plan object shapes with UV mapping in mind.

Unanswered Questions
I haven't tinkered with Doom 3's built in "renderbump" command yet. How does this compare to Normal Map Create?

When a low detail mesh has extremely high angles between polygons, the plugin "breaks" at the edge instead of rendering a continuous surface. There's a "Cutoff Angle" setting in the plugin's interface, but it's already set at the highest level. Are there workarounds?

The d3 rendermap from what i hear is very kewl you actually see each pixel of the model or triangle of the model being built in front of you.

Caution, if that's the same plugin we used for a while, then it's a bit weird.

Often, the normals would be reversed in D3, that is to say, things that should be indented were sticking out.

We now ONLY use renderbumpflat for textures. It's designed for D3, it must work alright!

In Lightwave 8.x you got 5 small buttons in the bottom right corner, labelled like "W" "T" "M" and so on.. click on the T button, the you can select all your UV sets in the box on his right. When you select it, lighwave automatically display the uv in the "UV layout" viewport. It's basically the same as you said (opening menu with F8) but more fast.



It's not a problem. Actually, this is the method to assign a doom3 material to a surface on your model. If you don't do it, obviously the model won't work.



Yeah, UV's are famous for this kind of things..


DooM3 renderbump it's much slower then the "normal create" plugin, but honestly, in my expeerience, my best normal maps are done with DooM3 built in renderer.

Use the Doom renderbump. THe main benefit is that it treats intersecting pieces of separate geometry as a single mesh, which is far superior the ATI normal mapper plugin for lightwave which will often ignore small pieces of geometry, like the buttons on a jacket or the metal rings on a boot where the laces go through.

Note for anyone else learning to make high detail models with LightWave:

I'm more comfortable with Doom 3's RenderBump now. As people above have said, it really does turn out wonderful results. The smoothness and clarity of the results is wonderful!
I find NormalMapCreate useful for creating quick test maps, because it's a little more user friendly and renders faster than Doom 3. Once the model's done, I always take it to Doom 3 for the final normal map.

Thanks for all the help, people!