Do normal maps work with the IPhone? Trying to get every bit of detail I can while keep the poly count down.
The short answer is that it is theoretically possible, but not using Unity’s existing shaders.
So I read this line…
"iPhone GPU support only object/world space normalmaps, so you can use them only on a static meshes right now. We might add normalmaps support for skinned meshes later on. "
I seems that I can’t use normal maps for my game characters then?
Bummer if that is in fact true…
Correct
But on the pre 3GS you somehow wouldn’t want them to be present as well as you don’t intend to have 1 character and nothing else and thats what you are basically restricted to with the lack of cubemaps as sphere maps don’t reflect the normal colors required for the normal mapping well enough.
Reason is that the vertex colors must be updated every frame to give the right normal lighting.
With 3GS on the other hand you wouldn’t need or use that approach anymore at all as you have programable shader pipeline, but you can’t use that in Unity iPhone at the time.