normal mapping

Code-wise, I was already expecting some amiga demos to use HDR or at least light-bloom effects, so it didn’t take me so off guard upon seeing it on both tbl and ephidrena demos… but ephidrena’s use of bloom + normal mapping gave a very very very great look to the demo, even if it was a bit too slow… but then again i haven’t coded any complete 3d engine yet (no, i’m not kidding, i always were a 2d effect junkie) so maybe it’s just too damned complex…

So, while taking a walk back from work today, I started to wonder about how I’d implement normal-mapping on amiga, and later on I’ve downloaded some normal-mapping lightwave plugins for OSX that manage the creation of normal maps via the well-known method of having both a low-poly and a high-poly object and somehow mixing them. The page even provided a simple and effective manual on how to make a test from start to finish, so I was able to make a simple and crappy blob, generate a normal map and then use it to render the lowpoly object. So, providing I could manage to endure the creation of some lightwave scene exporter or at least a newschool lightwave object loader, I’d be able to use a normal-mapped in some yet-to-be-written-engine.