Bump mapping the soccer ball
Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 8:33 pm
I am working on a mod that requires something like a beach ball with some texture on it. I'm using the soccer ball because, to my knowledge, it's the most convincingly spherical object in the game. I've shrunken it down by about 10X. It's critical that I get a good looking bump map on the soccer ball, because by default it is very dull and flat, and about as appetizing as a dead chipmunk. No matter what I try though, I can't get any texture on that smooth, boring exterior. I've tested my bump map on the assault bomb, and it looks fantastic. But of course, the assault bomb has too many off-kilter angles to pass for a large ball.
I've been all through the bloc, mode, hlmt, bitm and shad tags, tried swapping all the various shaders and bitmaps between the soccer ball and assault bomb, among others, and it always results in a flat shellac-green ball, still with no visual character.
I am new to skinning (and not enjoying it so much), so perhaps there is something obvious I've missed. For one thing, since I have scaled the soccer ball's mode and phmo (thanks Xzodia) down by a factor of 10, does that mean the bump map is also being miniaturized? That would make the texture much, much harder to see, but I'd expect at least some kind of topography when I do the extreme closeup with Yelo. I'll try testing that theory on some other models later...
Any other ideas? Has someone successfully skinned the soccer ball, or can you tell what I'm messing up here?
I've been all through the bloc, mode, hlmt, bitm and shad tags, tried swapping all the various shaders and bitmaps between the soccer ball and assault bomb, among others, and it always results in a flat shellac-green ball, still with no visual character.
I am new to skinning (and not enjoying it so much), so perhaps there is something obvious I've missed. For one thing, since I have scaled the soccer ball's mode and phmo (thanks Xzodia) down by a factor of 10, does that mean the bump map is also being miniaturized? That would make the texture much, much harder to see, but I'd expect at least some kind of topography when I do the extreme closeup with Yelo. I'll try testing that theory on some other models later...
Any other ideas? Has someone successfully skinned the soccer ball, or can you tell what I'm messing up here?