Scarlet said:
I would like to see a good demo of normal mapping. Anyone have a link? I understand it is a good way to gain the effect of a lot of detail without a lot of work.
The only thing which has got less work with normalmapping is the GPU, the artists workload increases when you use this technique. Like jolle said, the process of normalmapping basically records the surface information (normals) of a high-poly model and stores it in a texturemap, which is then applied to a low-poly version of same model. That way you can have the shading and texturing detail of a much more high-poly model applied to a more manageble in-game model. As long as we can't push polygon numbers in the hundreds of millions in realtime, this is a convenient compromise. While Doom3 was the first game anounced to use this kind of technology, FarCry is so far the only retail game to use it...
Back on topic. As a current ATI and prior Nvidia user I can only say I see the merit in both types of tech demos. Nvidia is demonstrating quite impressively how far today's realtime graphics have come and what they are capable off. The modeling, animation and hair simulation of Nalu is extremely close to well done FMV or CG movie characters these days. It also demonstrates how far texturing and shading have advanced and that we are really catching up with the capabilities off offline rendering in that respect too. Of course characters quite as complex as her won't be feasible in an in-game environment anytime soon as you typically want dozens of characters on screen at once, that doesn't invalidate the demo though. Nvidia have also shown a number of other demos, some of them in more complex environments and more game-like scenarios.
Ruby on the other hand I have yet to see in action, so it is a lot harder to judge. I assume there will be an environment and some kind of action occuring with/around her, so it will be a little bit more applicable to a real game setting and hence probably be more interesting to watch too. You quickly see the compromise for that even in the few images available though, she looks like a plastic doll, with the typical short game-compromise haircut ... and inflatable lips. I'm not gonna argue looks though, both are perfectly attractive virtual women in their own right. Can't wait to really see the whole demo though, judging from ATI's R300 demos its gonna rock.
To me the more cool real-time demos I can see the better, doesn't matter which company produces them. Even the XNA demos from evil M$ are cool to lok at IMO...
