The in-editor normal map creation in Unity3 has been greatly improved in the Beta, offering much better compression and better results. In fact, for flat surfaces without large, chunky details I prefer using Unity rather than CrazyBump. But CrazyBump is still king.

CrazyBump for Mac is currently in Alpha so there's quite a few limitations atm, but it's still functional.

I've been swimming in the Unity3 Beta for a little while now, slowly migrating my project over, noticing it doesn't like Frameshift's Decal Framework, but on the whole having a pretty sexy time. 

 

A champion named Tim Cooper is making his own Node based Material Editor using Editor APIs and UnityGUI. He says it could be a few weeks away, so hopefully will be solid by the time Unity3 gets an official release. 

He's on Twitter if you want to keep an eye on it.

After meeting our guide the morning we set out for the Restricted Zone in Bialowieza, I had the idea to record what she had to say on my iPhone. It's about an hour long and is difficult to hear in parts. I did spend a bunch of time cleaning up the audio but I had to call it a day at some point. Hope you get something out of it. Thanks Joanna!

• My Bialowieza Flickr Set

Over the weekend David, Ben, Rasmus, Orestes and Luca, all students at the ITU, joined me on a journey to Puszcza Białowieska (Bialowieza Forest), NE of Warsaw, on the border of Poland and Belarus. This small woodland is one of the last remnants of the lowland forest that once covered much of Europe and is still only partly accessible with a licensed guide at your side. The Park has been declared a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO and is on the World Heritage List. I've been wanting to go ever since I read about it in Alan Weisman's The World Without Us.

After learning at the last minute that the post-ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl airspace was clear, realising I had no internet connection on my iPhone that held the information we needed, and enjoying lunch so much in Warsaw that we missed *the only bus* to Bialowieza, we hired a car and drove 250km into  the Polish countryside.

There is very little English spoken in Poland. That was lesson no#1. Pulling into the tiny town of Bialowieza around midnight we encountered a bunch of extras from Resident Evil 4 falling down the road. I don’t know what they were doing on the road, only that they were drunk and that we had no chance of understanding each other no matter how hard we tried. Eventually we found the Belavezhskaya Pushcha National Park center and slept well indeed. I can recommend this place if you are planning a trip to the forest, just try and get there before it’s dark.

The town is made up of a handful of hotels that cater for visitors interested in the forest and locals who advertise their home a a places to stay. There is manmade Bison everywhere, and throughout Poland thanks to Zubr Beer (Zubr - European Bison or Wisent). A lone restaurant with a good menu and a great playlist awaits opposite the big hotel that advertises the sexy spa. Try the Venison Dumplings.

In pictures Bialowieza forest might not seem so remarkable, and I was struck by how inadequate the camera was at capturing what was special about it. But the mix of light and sound and mystique surrounding the ‘restricted zone’ made for a special place. There was a feeling of being submerged inside an entirely different atmosphere. An atmosphere within an atmosphere.

One of the features that stood out was the forest floor. It was not what I expected from an old growth forest. It was new, looked young and fresh and bounced the light back upwards creating a glow throughout the forest.

Our timing was good. The weather was perfect and, because we were there at the beginning of Spring, flowers were blooming that we might not have seen a week later. Our guide Joanna remarked that the forest floor had noticeably changed since she was last there, just 2 days before.

It was especially good to hear about the 500 year life cycle of the forest, how it renews itself in relation to the lifespan of the trees, and Joanna told how just a few days earlier she and a group had to escape the park when a sudden burst of wind cracked an old tree that fell right nearby.

The Norway Spruce is one species that has reacted very poorly to the overall warming of the forest and I gained a clear impression that over the past 2 decades the Bialowieza Biosphere had proved to be an invaluable and very sensitive site for evaluating the effects of environmental change.

The restricted zone of Bialowieza is a world renowned site for bird watchers and I saw a number of photographers with lenses as long as their legs coming in and out of the park. We were lucky enough to see a rare Woodpecker and it was great to notice the holes they’d made here and there. There are trees throughout the forest which are naturally hollow, branches and all, and the animals live in them like it's a hotel.

You can book tours that leave at 5am, at 9am and again in the evenings if I’m not mistaken. But book in advance and if you need an English guide make that clear. If you want to cross into Belarus you need to organise a visa first. I was told this could be done at a hotel in Bialowieza but we didn’t have time to look into it. I’m sure any time of year is rewarding, but note that it did drop to -30 degrees last winter in the forest.