NDO 2 is pay but i was sold when they said i could paint normals. Is is worth the cash you think?

Its a very usefull bit of software. id say at 70$/100$ its a great investment.

Last edited by r_fletch_r; Today at 10:08 PM.. Reason: to make it comprehensible

Need's another looking over haha.

NDO 2 costs alot but i was set on buying it when they said i could paint normals with it. Is is worth the cash?

If that's the question then its something I'd like to know too aha.

Yes its worth ever penny

Yes.

Installed it ... hardly touch it now. Probably because I almost never touch normalmaps at work though to be fair. If I put the time in to learn it, I might use it a lot more.

Yes and i've only used it for about 15 mins so far but cant wait to do more with it

I bought it and Hell Yeah!

Very much yes. It is far from a one trick pony and the normal shapes and painting are so nice! Do it!!!!! The Normals to AO is very nice too..

Oh, you guys!

I watched some demonstrations, and being able to make normals in photoshop made me cream my pants, with my artistic backround being spent mostly in that program. Im sold.

why not just give the trial a shot?

Sorry to ask this but, is it just for environment? Or you can edit any set of normals with it. Like, normals for organic model.

It's definitely worth it, and at the rate the discounts are going, they're going to eventually be paying YOU money to take it. It could certainly be used for organic models as well.

Originally Posted by Jesse Moody

why not just give the trial a shot?

This post wins internet ! Check what it can do and judge by yourself...

worth every penny, i was on the beta used ndo1 before it and payed full price for it with no regrets.

i still do highpolys though what i i started doing was baking to get my nice edges and useing NDO2 for anything i would have floated before.

really as cheap as $99 for a commercial license between 59 and 69 for non comercial, with a free 30 day trial so not expensive at all.

It also has 35% discount now so...

Just about to get it Really want to implement this into my workflow.

Absolutely worth it. There are some quirks about it, but Teddy is fast at releasing updates to fix issues that people post about in the support forum. I've been using it a lot at home to get more comfortable with it, before presenting it to my studio to purchase a full set of seats.

It's extremely useful for a lot of simple things, BSP-type texturing and the like. I also use it for adding details on top of my baked normals via sculpt layers, instead of modeling all of that with floating geometry.

The actual quality of the NDo normals is amazing - it's 100% identical to a fully modeled bake. It can't replace modeling/sculpting, since there are things that always need to be modeled to get good base normals. But there is a ton you can get away with using NDo. Insets, panel lines, screws/bolts, cables - you name it. Saves a ton of time. I did a test of creating a simple inset rectangle that has a slope on the inside. Took about 3 minutes or so to model. In NDo it took about 15 seconds. The visual differences were nonexistent. They looked exactly the same, both in Photoshop and on the mesh in Max.

You can argue that creating a greeble library of kitbash components speeds up the use of floating geometry and that's true, but floating geo can also be a pain to deal with when baking, making sure your cages or offsets fully encompass the geometry and all that. In the end, it just depends on what you're comfortable using.

As others have stated it is so worth it. While you still will need to bake to get good edges and the such NDO2 is perfect for small details. The feature I have been using the most in the Normal to AO tool, it works much better than normal baking.

If you were to make a model and have floating geo you would end up having to go back and fix up the AO around the edges most likely but with NDO2 that is no longer a problem!

Needless to say I have worked it into my workflow and I am not sure how I could go back.

nDo 2 is awesome and definitely worth the money.
As Joshua said, Teddy is super fast at fixing bugs and adding feature requests, so you can't go wrong.
There is a learning curve (as with everything), but once you get around that, then you will be flying

Im tempted to get it, but will wait until I need to start doing more normal maps again. But like the others have said, doing small details looks to be very fast, and would save time I'm sure.

I pretty much never bake anything anymore (there are occasions when I still do). It's just so much faster most of the time and I can improvise a lot more AND try out things like shapes, scale and repetition in my textures WAY faster than if I would have baked out everything.

So yeah, IMO it's definitely worth it

The normals quality is really fantastic, too. They're full 3D normals, not the junk you get from the Nvidia filter, or even using Crazybump to convert heightmaps (not that CB is junk by any means!).

In a few minutes I threw this together in Photoshop, whereas it would have taken at least 15 minutes to model it in Max, set it up for baking and rendering the maps.



It won't replace modeling or baking by any means, but it's an awesome supplemental tool.

His site doesn't work for me anymore. Is it down for everyone else too?

It's working for me, Lichy.