I have made a couple of models in blender, the first I unwrapped and used UV to put a texture on it and it came out pretty good. The second one I just used the Material colors in blender and then just changed the material attributes (jpg, normal, detail in some cases) or just selected a different color for the material in game, and that seem to work pretty well too. Is there one favorable way to do this or does it all just depend on what you are doing, both methods being good? I am still pretty new to all of this, I believe normal has to do with the surface texture and possible light reflection. I have not downloaded GIMP yet, at some point I will.
I still have serious trust issues with the Torque3D Materials Editor, so I prefer to simply export the textured material from Blender and do any fine-tuning in the materials.cs notepad file. Normal maps are colour-coded textures that don't actually affect the colour of the material; instead they artificially distort the surface shading to give the illusion of fine details. Blender can automatically generate normal maps from detailed objects, and apply them to less-detailed ones for use in-game. http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/baking-normal-maps-from-models.php If you're using the experimental version while creating materials, make sure you regularly clear the My Documents > BeamNG.drive > cache folder, as this can prevent materials from saving properly.