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I just discovered the user manual installed with xnormal. So I will RTFM, but in case there are issues the manual does not address or other workarounds/version issues, I'm leaving this post as is.
colleagues:
i'm having problems with a normal mapped, complicated organic figure (an octopus) created in blender for use in ogre 1.10,; i created the normal map with xnormal 3.17.16.
the model doesn't need any sharp edges, like the edges of a cube, cylinder,, pyramid, etc, since the model is of an invertebrate that has no sharp edges. (although i may have misunderstood whether 'sharp edges' in the normal mapping process means sharp edges as in the edge of a knife or cube.)
i'm using blender 2.75 with the blender2ogre exporter, version '0.6.0', and exporting to ogre 1.10 format.
the mesh has two materials. i've created a high and low model for each material, and i've bake each material separately, and applied the resulting maps to the two material figure in ogre.
there is some intersecting non manifold geometry in the deep interior or the model, but the artifacts created by the geometry are hidden by other surfaces and are not that visible as they are in the mouth area under the octopus' head ( which i haven't yet found affected as of yet, there could be problems there, but i'm focusing on what the viewer would see the most often, which are the webs between the tentacles.)
i'm concentrating on some non-manifold geometry that is very visible to the viewer, namely the webbing between the tentacles, which by their very nature are non-manifold, since they are flexible plane like surfaces that don't need to be extruded. the webs vertices do not penetrate the tentacles on either side, as i built up the webs by creating edges between the existing tentacles. perhaps there is no way to get xnormal to render normals to non-manifold geometry, in which case i'll go back into blender and make each of the webs an enclosed 3d triangle. (i.e. an extruded triangle subdivided to give the armature something to deform good enough for a real-time application and enough for normal baking.
i've just started using 2.75, and i know that alot has changed in terms of smoothing groups and other normal mapping related features since the last release i was using, 2.69. i've read through lots of posts on this forum, but i haven't found much guidance for organic models and that deal with the quirks of working with blender 2.75 and ogre 1.10.
before i post questions, if anyone could address the things i should be doing prior to posting questions (issues like to make cage or not make cage, hard edges, uv islands, what format to export to for baking i.e. fbx or obj or something else), please let me know.
perhaps this thread could work as a checklist for people who are using the blender and xnormal to ogre pipeline, unless such a checklist exists on this forum already, in which case, a link would be fine, i will edit it to create the checklist of what i find to be effective.
thanks!
below is a screen-shot in ogre 1.10: (using openspace3d with a neutral diffuse map), followed by a screen-shot in blender 2.75 with glsl shading of the normal map, followed by a screen-shot of the nornormalmap , followed by a screen-shot in blender with the uv template turned on, and then turned off...the jagged edges do not appear to cross over into the web's uv space, but as you can see, the final result are not pretty. The two last screeenshots show a closeup of the web area with the wireframe turned on, and with the wirefrace turned off so you can see the effects of the little bit of sculpting I did to the webs. (I just made them a little ridge using blender sculpt mode.)
