> in the voxel creation programs what is the normals option used for?
> like viewing the normals but what are normals?
Take a seat... might take a while..;)
WW used the concept of normals to fake a light source in their game. The visual result is that an object seems to have highlights.
Normals are just numbers assigned to each voxel node. You could represent them with a grey scale going from dark grey to white grey.
They act as multipliers for the base color of the voxel. As you've noticed in the game, a base color can even blank out to white because of the normals.
But the normals have a complexer behaviour : the amount of colorshifting also depends on the rotation angle of the voxel. This way you can fake a directional light. In RA2 , the light comes from the lower left corner. If you translate that back to the normals, it means that those normals that point to the SW direction, are causing the strongest shift of the base color.
The make it even more simpler :rolleyes: the game uses 2 normal systems next to each other.
-The oldest one , is what we call the "TS normals". These voxels are identified by their header=2. That system uses 36 normals. Because we are unsure what kind of spatial diagram WW used, Will and I decided to use an easier diagram , based on 26 of the 36 normals. Not perfect, but better then nothing...In case you're wondering what I mean with a spatial diagram, have a look at this :
http://www.eclipsemods.com/flyby/NORMALS/TS_style_spatial_diagram.png
-The other system is what we call "the RA2 normals". Considering the amount of normals, no need to say it is pretty hard to both ,trace what normal corresponds with what direction and determine its postition in a spatial diagram.
The reason why the current autonormal tools are "only" average is because of the difficulty to find algorithms that that can recognize what normal a voxel node should have. The only correct way would be to use the original 3D model and obtain the angles of the polygons to find the corresponding normals on its spatial diagram....
Sounds pretty :confused: huh? :)