bump mapping tutorials

[Dreamy Kid]

i suggest you checking the texture tutorial links, i'm sure you can find what you're looking for there

[thirdeyeblind999]

Hi there,

Thanks for your reply - I've already had a good browse through - funnily it has tutorials on opacity, diffuse blah blah - but I'm struggling to see anything on bump mapping - or detailed displacement mapping - I mean making bricks on walls stick out in vray - not making landscapes with the default max effect...

I'm really just looking for any photoshop tips to turn a colour texture into a nice bump map - do you guys use any particular filters/effects to achieve this?

[leigh]

I'm really just looking for any photoshop tips to turn a colour texture into a nice bump map - do you guys use any particular filters/effects to achieve this?

BIG MISTAKE. Don't make the mistake of thinking this is possible ;) Remember, bump maps use grey values to determine apparent topographical changes. Generally, most applications interpret light grey values as being the "raised" areas, and dark greys as being "indented" areas (Maya is the other way around though).

So desaturating or filtering a colour map is not a solution. Why? Because how is any filter going to be intelligent enough to understand from pure colour which areas are supposed to be raised, and which ones are supposed to be indented? A dark colour on one type of surface may need to be raised, while that same colour on another kind of surface may need to be indented.

Generally when making bump maps I simply use grey brushes to manually paint the details, or use the Dodge and Burn tools on a grey version of the texture to manually create the right effect. There is no quick way around it. Texturing is usually always quite a lot of work.

It's really simple in practise. Just make raised areas and indented areas. Not really sure how there can be any confusion or why anyone would need a tutorial for this :)

[wurp]

Hmm not sure I agree here, while it doesnt work to extract a bumpmap from the colormap in some cases it actually works most of the time. What I do is take the colorchannel, desaturate it and then adjust the levels until it looks right, after that I just add specific details that needs to be raised/indented using a brush. Obviously this doesnt work if you are doing stuff like treebark and stuff that has a lot of details but for just adding some randomness to the surface it works fine to adjust the colormap....



BIG MISTAKE. Don't make the mistake of thinking this is possible ;) Remember, bump maps use grey values to determine apparent topographical changes. Generally, most applications interpret light grey values as being the "raised" areas, and dark greys as being "indented" areas (Maya is the other way around though).

So desaturating or filtering a colour map is not a solution. Why? Because how is any filter going to be intelligent enough to understand from pure colour which areas are supposed to be raised, and which ones are supposed to be indented? A dark colour on one type of surface may need to be raised, while that same colour on another kind of surface may need to be indented.

Generally when making bump maps I simply use grey brushes to manually paint the details, or use the Dodge and Burn tools on a grey version of the texture to manually create the right effect. There is no quick way around it. Texturing is usually always quite a lot of work.

It's really simple in practise. Just make raised areas and indented areas. Not really sure how there can be any confusion or why anyone would need a tutorial for this :)

[leigh]

Hmm not sure I agree here, while it doesnt work to extract a bumpmap from the colormap in some cases it actually works most of the time. What I do is take the colorchannel, desaturate it and then adjust the levels until it looks right, after that I just add specific details that needs to be raised/indented using a brush. Obviously this doesnt work if you are doing stuff like treebark and stuff that has a lot of details but for just adding some randomness to the surface it works fine to adjust the colormap....

It does work in some cases, but generally by sheer fluke. My point was that you should never rely on this being the case.

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