Normals can be so different

[Leen3131cs 107]

  

 

Hi Guys,

Today I downloaded a livery for the LES DC3 uploaded not long ago and as I am very interested to see how things are made I opened the files and studied them.
Though its a nice project and suitable for XP11 ( after editing a lot of OBJ files yourself) I was a bit surprised( you may say disappointed too)  to see the normal files.
At first sight they look quiet impressive SEE THE PICTURE ON TOP.
Nevertheless something went wrong with this normal and I was thinking about a normalfile I saw a few years ago made by Aegen wich was much more impressive.
Even more impressive is the normalfile for the same plane made by Klaas Kobbert very recently SEE LOWER PICTURE

Let me explain why the NORMAL Klaas Kobbert made is so much better, it might be handy for all of you who want to start working with normals
,working with normals will become a standard issue for all painters working with XP11.
For models with (partial) bare metal it will be a must to make the multy-colored normals ( with their alphas)  for every individual livery.
Its not possible to make a standard normal for all bare or partially bare variants.( a paintkit cannot help there, its one of the reasons why painting for XP11 is so more difficult) ) 

Under the horizontal plate-lines in the UPPER picture we see light-blue lines and they make the plate-panels look like giant "buttons"
The result is the platelines look like grooves instead of overlapping plates.
The rivets are really big and on many places touching eachother or even placed overlapping.

The LOWER picture shows a normal really representing overlapping plates, unequal depht in the plates and realistic undulation.
The rivets a significant more relistic in size and do not tough eachother nor overlap.

The UPPER picture shows impressive at first sight ,when looked at better we see its not really representing a DC3 in a realistic way.
Its to much Playmobil.

The superb results shown on the LOWER picture can only be achieved by making the normalfile for 50% by hand and not only generating it in a painting program.

I am confident this will help you making better normals.


Leen