Normal maps are evil

Darnit, my original post got lost. Not only are normal maps evil, blogger seems to be evil too!

Anyway, what I had to say was: Normal maps may seem very versatile, but they are actually very specialized. This puts lots of pressure on the gfx artist (me). Anyway, my current problem consist of staying low-poly while still getting more detail without having normal-map errors. I think most of the errors come from hard/soft edges, but I have faith in my newest attemt. Here I will use no hard edges and bevel all edges that are supposed to be hard then turn them soft. Except the blade, which I will keep hard so it gets real hard (hopefully).

Blog created, old diary perhaps gone?

Had my old project diary at home. But my computer at home is currently broken so our good friend Simon suggest a blog instead. So here we are.

Currently I'm working on the low-poly model.

Me and Fredrik have done a lot of tests to ensure the smoothness of the project. Problem areas are almost all about normal maps and include: Soft/hard edges, UV-mapping, and ofcourse generation.

Soft/hard edges is mostly a problem for me. It affects how the normal maps are generated.
UV-mapping is limited to be very non-streched and to have as few seams as possible. The seams should have as much the same orientation as possible.
During the generation of normalmaps, I will have to be very considerate and make sure that the correct data is sampled.

About my sketches:
I forgot to do a few sketches, but I remember them now. They are not the most important but I aim to do them in the coming weeks. The most important sketch(fron/back/side views) is finished and I have also used it for my low-poly model.