Hi, I am a total noob. I made my first normal map on a sphere with the parallax shader and now I am totaly addicted. Can’t stop. Must normal map everything. Would this be a huge performance hit if I did normal map everything? The sad thing is that this is all I now how to do. I have never writen a line of code in my life. Would it help to get a book like Java Script for Dummies to learn the basic format. I have just started reading the Scripting Tutorial and I need an even simpler broken down explanation of scripting. I am lysdexic, I mean dyslexic and a slow learner.
I’m very new myself, so I can’t offer you advice on the code, but let me just say those normal maps look amazing!
Or you could settle for doing graphics for others and then get code in return or at least become more familiar with how Unity and games work before you start the programing side. Its all a balance, nice normal maps by the way, any clue as to what you used, I haven’t had to much luck with them. jeff
Don’t hold me to this, but I think that Normal Maps may be disactivated with a low graphics setting, and on old graphics cards, won’t be seen at all, so won’t take up a performance hit on slow cards.
In my experience, I don’t get a hit with lots of normal maps, so I recommend having them where ever the player would be looking, ie - not the floor or ceiling.
The performance hit for having normal maps is pretty minimal. As ben said older cards cant gun fragment programs, how ever the build in shader do have a few different paths for doing such things on older cards. I think the thing you really need to worry about is vram. It’s pretty easy to get carried away and then realize you used up all your vram space. So no there isnt a huge performance hit with normal maps, but you have to watch your vram more carefully.
Bill
Thanks! I used ZBrush to make the normal map and it only took me about 8 minutes. ZB makes things realy easy. I think I read somewhere that Unity can make normal maps too. I’m not sure. 
Heh, I must be more the stone ages than I already thought, because if I have more than 1 pixel light (required for normal mapping) I notice huge slowdowns, and if I have more than 2…it’s not playable… But that is just because I have an old card. My machine is a dual G5, but my card is a GeForce 5200FX 64mb. (ugh)
-Jeremy
How can you tell how much vram you are taking up?
Sorry if that is a stupid question.
It would be super cool if unity had some like VRAM bar, showing how much you have filled… but for now you have this. Just a little math 
Bill
Isn’t there an Nvidia profiler of some sort that shows the vram usage in realtime? I remember reading about it somewhere…
EDIT: BTW, Nicholas told me that it is not too critical if you go over your vram limit. So just make your game sensibly and ramp down detail if you need to.
-Jeremy
Well you certainly cant view more then the max amount of VRAM at once, thats really what you have to watch for. You can have more textures then VRAM as long long as there not viewed at once.
Bill