You're most welcome!
Yes, Bryce is a good choice. Lots of folks here use it and like it a lot.
If you feel like experimenting, here is a list of other external renderers:
http://www.independentdeveloper.com/...rendering_soft
EDIT: for the curious, when I'm not writing my own shaders, I do most of my renders with POV-Ray or occassionally Poser
Quote:
Originally Posted by JumpDog
Well I figure you make all these maps just as you would a diffuse map, in basically any photo/paint program, so my only remaining question left I suppose... can I apply these maps to an object in AC3D or do I need to use another program like a renderer?
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You apply the texture coordinates--how the map sticks to the object--in AC3D. You'll find the Texture Coordinate Editor on the tools menu. This lets you change the texture (UV) coordinates.
The maps themselves are applied in your renderer.
You can apply a diffuse map in AC3D from the Object > Texture menu. This is a good idea even if you plan to apply all your maps in your renderer, just to make sure the texture coordinates look right. Also, some of the file exporters won't export the texture coordinates unless you have a texture applied in AC3D.
You're right, most of the maps you make in a paint program. A few of them, like normal maps, can be tricky to make by hand. These are usually made by taking a high-resolution model, writing the normals to a texture map, then apply the normal map to a lower-resolution version of the same model. Those tools luuckyy mentioned--Nvidia Melody and ATI NormalMapper--can be used for this task. You'll find a plug-in to export AC3D files to the NormalMapper utility here:
http://www.independentdeveloper.com/...l-map-exporter
Oh, and thanks luuckyy for the link to crazybump! Never seen it before but it looks like a really useful tool; I'm download it as we speak.
