Development Blog 15 - Normal Maps, Hair and Improved code

Normal maps are in!
(Click to enlarge)

If you don't know what a Normal map is, its a bump texture map that makes detail pop, in the screenshot above (You'll have to enlarge it to see it) you can see the skin pore bumpiness.

Its really simple to use, you have your diffuse texture for example Body_Nice.png, to add a bump map to be loaded with it we also have a normal map texture called Body_Nice_n.png and it'll automatically load with it. While I don't have the best examples for it now you can get some really nice visuals with it.

Since I haven't worked on my code in a while I've been going over it and fixing several bits and bobs, mostly just making everything run smoother. I'm getting close to finishing the basic character loading into the world functionality.

Last but not least, MORE HAIR CHOICES. It's been bugging me that there was only 1 hair piece, so I've done some work with other programs and now started to get more hair into the game.