Screens of the day 30 - Them normals be hard yo (part 1)

I am currently doing frantic clean up and restructuring for the creation of the game library, that is a somewhat more general self contained engine in a box. This will take time, especially since I spent some time dicking around with terrain shaders, so have two filler posts about that. Feel free to skip this post and the next one, because the end results that are more stable will be mentioned in a normal post.

So we saw last time how spherical harmonics can be used to enhance the perception a normal mapping in surfaces that are facing away from the light. An added benefit is that the ambient lighting is dependent on the skybox, making objects more blue on a clear sky and more purple/orange with an intense sunset skybox, but since I did not manage to finish the skyboxes, you can't see this benefit. But even with this effect, the normal mapping is quite subtle.

Let's put into overdrive! Do kids still say that?

So I will be presenting a set of 3 pictures, the first being simple blending, the second normal mapping with spherical harmonics, and the third the new EXTREEEEME normal mapping.

First the high terrain textured zone:

Ahhh, the effect is far too powerful here, but the bumpiness is accentuated.

The back side is a bit better, but still too bright. but notice the difference in bumpiness when compared to the second sample.

Grassy surfaces fare a lot better. And finally, some soil textured surfaces:

So this shader has potential. I need to do something about the exaggerated problematic areas. Which I'll do in part two.