So What’s The Big Deal?
Some of you may be wondering, so what this big deal with normal/specular maps. Prompted by a poster in Jack’s (a.k.a. FlyingJackal Sim) normal map how-to thread at X-Pilot, we’ve decided to answer this question. Fact of the matter is, we just finished up an American Airlines in oneworld titles livery. Its primarily a bare metal tube top to bottom. Normal and specular maps were an absolute necessity for the success of this livery so we thought that we’d put together some comparisons and highlight some of the effects that you can pull out of your lighting with these maps in place.
First, lets compare the aircraft with and without normal/spec maps.
In the first set of images, focus your attention at the specular highlight on the nose and at the one world logo. In the second set of images, focus on the detail in the specular highlight and on the rivet lines. In the third set of images, focus on the oneworld titles.
In the next image, focus on the specular highlight paying particular attention to the window surrounds, the skin, and the panel lines. The specular effect is best seen on the window plug inside of the large e of one world.
In this image, the diffuse texture map has been removed completely. This allows you to see the normal map and the diffuse map directly. Due to the time of day, the LIT texture is also visible. Eventually we would like to control the cabin lighting via plugin.
And just because we’ve shown you all of this, another full shot of the aircraft on climbout.
Do note though that screenshots don’t really do these effects justice. They are best viewed live when the conditions that you are viewing the aircraft change…ie, time of day, angle of the aircraft to the sun, camera placement etc.
Cheers
Back Inside
I’ve been bad I know. I’ve had all of this fun prettifying the exterior even more so, have spent some time recently optimizing texture usage, polygon usage etc and I think that I’ve had enough of all of that. I’m going back inside to finish what I started with the cockpit. Its full tilt inside until I finish it up so don’t expect too much in terms of written communication relaying progress, milestones etc. We’re living by the mantra, “We’re quiet because we’re busy.” Do be sure though to keep tabs with progress in the 3d cockpit gallery as it is a nice, quick, and convenient way for me to share visual progress 
Just a quick note, I’ve adjusted the gallery and from now on out, the latest images will be at the top of the list. As a matter of fact I’ve just put a few more up this evening. Feel free to leave comments here!
Cheers!
Alex
Bumpy…
Three words.
Normal / specular maps!
Thats it…nothing more to say…except that my fun with the exterior is about done for now. Back inside.
And the requisite pics of course.
Just a note, we’ll be posting updated pics of liveries as we get ‘em done in the exterior gallery. Look for DL, KLM, and ANA shots soon. I’ve got to get my sim reliable again…weird directory issues.
Cheers
My computer is back!…and I suppose that our announcement is important too
Well, after an eternity in the shop, my iMac is sitting back infront of me, its new insides are all sparkly and fresh. New LCD, PCU, and logic board…so about the only thing that isn’t new is the case, the RAM sticks, the hard drive and perhaps a few other bits and bobs. While I could wax poetic all day, I’d much rather get to the meat and potatoes. I’m back at full dev capacity and well, we have a lot of exciting developments to share.
Here is a nice list of the things that we’ve just crossed off of the list.
• New high resolution fuselage and vertical stabilizer textures are complete
• UV maps are now all compatible with normal maps without producing artifacts
• Ram Air Turbine is complete and awaiting plugin controlled animation commands from Sven
• Initial exterior lighting framework is in place. This gives us control over the logo lights on the tail, control over pax window brightness etc. We’ve got alot built into it already and I must say, the results are quite lovely.
• Exterior geometry and textures have been finalized. We’ve included a couple of extra goodies in the fuselage and remodeled a couple of the areas that we still felt were giving us problems.
Needless to say, we’re very happy with where we are at. At this point, we’re all ready to buckle down, leave the exterior save a few last minor details, and punch out the last of the cockpit and begin serious implementation of the plugin.
And some pictures because well, we all like pictures (and yeah, I got overzealous. These expand to a higher res than our normal pics.)
Cheers!
Gotta Love Karma…or is it Uncle Murphy?
Never ever have this conversation.
“I love my mac, hasn’t given me an ounce of trouble since I’ve had it.”
Because invariably, as soon as you’ve said it, something catastrophic will happen and well, let me just say that I’m eating my words. iMac blew its video card over the weekend, quite literally not one day after I had said conversation with a couple of my friends at our local coffee shop. Needless to say, I’ve taken the iMac in, factor a day or so to look at it and order the parts, a day or two to get the parts, and say a day to install. If I’m lucky, I should have my machine back by weeks end…if not, early next week. Must say that I’m relieved that I’ve still got Apple Care on my machine for another year.
Long story short, consider Alex on vacation until further notice. Note that Sven is still hard at work…Dhruv is still hard at work, so we’re probably more or less okay.
Also keep your eyes open here in about two weeks 
Cheers
Alex