| Submitted by , posted on 28 May 2002 |

Image Description, by This image shows the "fandisk" model, with normal-mapped lighting, and VIPM LOD. On the left, you see the model at 1016 triangles, lit on top, in wire-frame on the bottom. On the right, you see the original full detail version of the model, with about 12,800 triangles. The two lit images (on top) really are different, but it's mighty hard to tell them apart!
This is really old technology, but it's finally making its way into games. I'm first generating a unique full surface uv-mapping for arbitrary models; actually my uv-mapper is terrible at the moment, making lots of seams, but it does the trick. Next, I draw an object-space normal map for the model. Finally I generate a VIPM collapse sequence for the model. I can then render the model at any LOD, and use the normal map generated from the full LOD version. The lighting is just a simple DP3 operation, which can even be done with the fixed function pipeline on a GeForce1.
This will all be available for download sometime soon in the "Galaxy 3" package. In the mean time you can check out Galaxy 1 and 2 at http://www.cbloom.com/3d/
You can see the "fandisk" model at these web sites :
http://www.trianglesoftware.com/gueziec/progifs/fandisk.html
http://ftp.research.microsoft.com/Users/hhoppe/data/thesis/phase1_meshes/

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