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August 31, 2007. xNormal v3.11.1 released. |
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A small patch with tons of bugs corrected,
including:
- .NET frontend UI displace offset.
- Photoshop plugins x64 versions.
- Multicore 50% progress bar halt on AO computation.
- Ambient shadow pixel shader revised.
- Incorrect default renderer.
- FBX poly vertex normals. |
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Added a new version of the hxGrid agent
that is compatible with Windows 2000. |
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Also added a new feature to draw object
IDs when baking the highpoly texture into the lowpoly mesh.
Added an option to load multiple highpoly meshes from a folder.
Now the fine detail affects the ambient occlusion computation. |
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July 20, 2007. xNormal v3.11.0 released. |
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Corrected some multi-core CPU bugs.
Optimized a few the multi-threading and multi-core usage. |
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Corrected some process abortation bugs
and improved the SBM exporter plugin compatibility with 3dsmax 6 and 7.
Solved a problem with DX9 and ATI X1000 cards. I was passing the SM3.0 instruction
count limit on those cards which provoked the lowpoly models not to be displayed.
Now works ok.
Corrected several minor bugs too. |
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Added translucent shadows and fake
caustics in the 3d viewer.
Changed the way the grid is drawn. Now is a checked-texture solid plane and can
receive shadows from all the meshes. Now is positioned below the mesh set instead
of the world origin point.
You can control the color and show/hide it as before.
Added a small glowing rock ( or is an egg? ) to the
Bojana Nedeljkovic's DW2 example to show this new effect. |
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Now is possible to apply scale units
to the imported meshes ( in the maps generation process and also in the 3D viewer
).
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Also is possible to lock the light
to the camera and to center the camera's orbit point to the mass center of the scene
inside the 3D viewer.
Added the dilation filter for Photoshop ( which works exactly like the xNormal application
one, just select RGB channels + alpha mask ). Also added a normalizer filter. |
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Improved the program accesibility
putting well the "tab order"... finally!
Changed the memory manager internally to allow much more dense meshes and geometry. |
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Added a new tool to convert object-space
normal maps to tangent-space and also tangent-space normal maps to object-space.
Just need to select a mesh, the input and the output normal map and decide the space
to convert to.
Very easy and fast!> |
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Improved a lot the quality of the
AO rendering.
Caution when you set the number of rays per sample... the new system refers to "number
of rays per sample".. the old one to "number of hemisphere points"... So the new
system uses much less rays to get much better results! |
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Finally, added an experimental map
renderer based on Roman
Lut's hxGrid project.
You can create a cluster of computers to work together and accelerate the map rendering
100x times or even more! Imagine what you can do with a 100Ghz supercomputer!
For the next version I'm working in more experimental and superfast map renderers.
Stay tuned! |
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July 1, 2007. xNormal and ZBrush 3 normal map creation tutorial. |
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Stanislav Karpunin did a tutorial
about how to create high-quality normal map using a ZBrush 3's displacement map
and xNormal.
You can read more in the tutorials section or go directly
HERE . |
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June 11, 2007. xNormal v3.10.6 released. |
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Added two new examples. A spaceship
by Howard Day and a male bust by Vidar Rapp.
Also added an option inside the 3D viewer to rotate the camera and light automatically
( to make demo reels easier ).
Corrected some bugs ( Photoshop filters displaced bitmap preview, grayscale JPG
import error, OpenGL window resize, interior AO, incorrect external cage warning,
etc... ).
Improved the numerical stability and memory efficiency. Now the maps are processed
and released independently to use less RAM.
Restructured the program internally and now almost all can use multithreading, hyperthreading
and multicore natively. Before this just the rendering process used it. Now all uses it. |
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Added a new tool to compute approximate
occlusion from a height map.
It generates a cheap and fast AO without the need of raytrace a highpoly mesh.
This can be used to compute the cavity map using other an alternative method. Also
added an option to render AO without using a highpoly model.
For the tools you were forced to load images from disk. Now you can, additionally,
use clipboard copy/paste commands. |
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Added too a tool to create tangent-space
normal maps from lit photographs! Just need a digital camera, a tripode, a light
source and four photos taken with different light positions.
Is very easy to use and boost your productivity!. Just assign the lit photographs
to the slots and generate the normal map! Very easy and fast.
Added new methods to the normal map -to -cavity map tool
( EDT, MIN, MAX, AVG, DES and SPD ). |
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Added two new experimental tangent
space calculators to improve the tangent-space compatibility even more.
One is based on the Microsoft's D3DX libraries and other using the NVIDIA's Mesh
Mender. This should maximize the compatibility with 3DSMax and some 3D engines. |
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One of our partners,
8MonkeyLabs ( more specifically Jeff Rusell ), did a xNormal mesh importer (
with the xNormal SDK ) for their upcoming game "Darkest
of Days".
The .mesh format they use in the 3D engine can be now imported into xNormal and
is included in the installer.
I have not seen yet the game but those models look nice! |
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April 29, 2007. xNormal v3.10.5 released. |
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Solved some bugs related to image importers/exporters.
Added Autodesk 3DSMax 6/7/8 support for the .SBM mesh exporter.
Added Adobe Photoshop CS3 support for the height-to-normal map and normal map-to-cavity
map image filter.
You can download it in the downloads section as usually. |
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April 15, 2007. New cage tutorial. |
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Added a new Flash tutorial about how to use the new Autodesk 3DSMAX 9 .SBM mesh
exporter in order to save the "Projection Modifier" cage information to use it in
xNormal.
You can download it in the tutorials section.
You will need the Macromedia Flash Player to see it and 7ZIP to decompress the file. |
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April 11, 2007. xNormal 3.10.4 released. |
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Revamped the ambient occlusion system. Now you can use a new adaptive method which
is faster ( you can disable it and use the old method though ) than the previous
one. Also, you can use the cages and the maximum frontal ray distance to limit the
AO rays length.
Added a "bent normals / unoccluded direction" map generation when you render the
ambient occlusion. This new map can be used in global illumination PRT techniques. |
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Almost all the maps now include a MIN/MAX
rendering option that you can use to control the light/darkness.
Now you can use the "AO Bias" option to eliminate surface self-collision problems.
Also added a new AO distribution model, the "Random" one, which is very useful to
add some dirty to the shadow areas.
Solved some bugs in the OpenGL graphics driver painting the highpoly models and
also some problems in the DX9 graphics driver rendering meshes. |
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Added an option to ignore the ray hit
if the highpoly normal and the lowpoly one are opposite ( to solve reversed-normal
problems ). |
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Added a Photoshop PSD image importer.
Added Photoshop CS/CS2 filters for the xNormal height map to normal map and normal
map to cavity map tool.
Also, added 3DSMAX 9 .SBM mesh importer/exporter plugins with complete cage support
( with the "Projection Modifier" ).
Added support for the HD Photo ( Windows Media Photo ) image format which allows
to compress ( a lot! ) with much more quality than the JPGs and close or even better
than the JPEG2000 image format. It includes support for alpha channels and can be
lossy or lossless. To manage it better I recommend you the
Microsoft's HD-Photo Photoshop plug-in and to visit the excellent
Bill Crow's HD-photo blog
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Added a new amazing example created
by Bojana Nedeljkovic for the
Dominance War 2 contest. I wish her the best luck to win!
Also added other incredible Diablo 3 example created by
Samuel Arshlevon for the Blizzard 2006 contest.
By the way, both examples are using the PSD and HD Photo new formats. |
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Added a new tool to generate a cavity
map approximation from a tangent-space normal map.
This is very useful to enhace the wrinkles and pores appereance in conjunction with
the ambient occlusion map.
You can control the bright and contrast/depth of the microdetails and other options.
You can also use the Photoshop CS filter version of this tool. |
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Also changed the old installer by the
new and better NullSoft Scriptable Install System
one.
Finally, solved a lot of minor bugs ( numeric up-down increment revised, black sand
remover configure button, degenerated triangle-cages crash, etc... )
Enjoy it! |
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March 7, 2007. xNormal 3.10.2 released! |
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The triangle rasterizer was completely revamped and now is a bit faster and much
more accurate.
Also, added a new image filter to mitigate AO black sand pixels.
Solved tons of bugs like bad pixel offset, antialiasing problems and BMP scanline
problems. |
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February 6, 2007. Three new tutorials and xNormal 3.10.1 ( patch ). |
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Three tutorials about how to measure a good ray distance have been added.
xNormal v3.10.1 has been released to fix some bugs. |
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February 1, 2007. xNormal v3.10.0 released. |
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If you don't like the built-in cage editor this version will make you happy.
Now is possible to specify and use an external cage modeled in a program like 3dsmax,
Maya, XSI, etc... The parallax wall is using now one of these external cages to
show the newfeature.
By the way, the inner cage has been removed because has no real funcitonality. Now
only the outter cage exists and you can edit it better.
New fast supersampling methods has been added ( 2 samples, triangle sampling and
4X ). |
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You can control the kind of shadows
you want in the DX9 SM3.0 graphics driver ( the old shadows, area linear and area
noise ). Also you can notice a small performance improvement due to the new shading
code ( which is using partial precission where applicable ).
Improved the numerical stability of
the raycasters and the rasterizer. Also solved some conceptual problems inside them.
The memory usage for the memory-conservative raycasted have been reduced a lot due
to the new structure repacking.
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Added the possibility to output convexity,
thickness and proximity maps. These texture can be used for multiple things including
sub-surface scattering or to enhace wrinkles with the cavity/convexity map.
Added too a new parameters to control the ambient occlusion angle.
Ironbearxl's Sylia example has been updated. |
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Added a more simple example for texture
baking ( a EU flag! )... By the way... I'm looking for a good texture baking example...If
you wanna send me one just go to the contact section of
this web. Of course you will get a mention for it in the next xNormal version and
all my gratitude !
Added too a new input system inside the 3D viewer ( continuous mouse movement and
changed sample rate ). |
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Now xNormal includes a "tools" tab.
Added an useful heightmap-to-normalmap converter. Multiple methods are available.
I'm looking for some feedback about this new tool, please.
To make the 3D viewer and the maps generator more compatible, a "swizzle cordinates"
option has been added near the normalmap texture file. Added some basic transparency
support too ( 1bit, additive, glass and alpha blend ).
Tons of bugs have been solved and more pages has been added to the documentation.
By the way, I am trying to get a new computer to compile and debug well xNormal
because my old Duron 700 simply CAN'T compile in a decent time the 5M lines of source
code... Also wanna get a GeForce 8 to do some DX10 tests, a Mac Mini to do the port
to MacOS X and a videocapture card and some software to make better tutorials...
so donations are very
welcome THX!
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January 7, 2007. xNormal v3.9.4 has been released. |
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We improved the internacionalization/localization support. Now it supports
multiple languages, including right-to-left ones, in both .NET interface and 3D
viewer.
You can edit the external translation XML files to add custom languages or to modify
errors in the existing ones.
Solved a problem with mirrored UVs that was causing seams in the lighting. Added
a new example to show mirrored texture coordinates, cylindrical/sphere and continous
mapping are supported.
Improved the camera orbiting mode, specially for objects with center far from the
world (0,0,0) origin.
Included a ZIP installation package for the people without administrator rights.
Also solved some problems in the Windows Installer packagement and with multiuser
Windows accounts. |
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Realtime shadows using the DX9 Shader
Model 3 driver has been improved with penumbra soft shadows that harden on contact.
You can also choose an option to generate noise in the penumbra to avoid banding.
Now the viewer uses a 60 FPS limitation to avoid multitasking problems and to improve
UI's response.
Two new fast supersampling methods have been added and much more! |
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