Texture Map questions

broncomech

I have a couple of questions, will ask them all here rather than starting multiple threads.

1. I have the Millennium Dragon Textures installed but can not locate them in DS4.5 install location is C:\Users\Public\Documents\My DAZ 3D Library\Runtime\Textures\DAZ\Animals\MilDragon
I have searched the content tab for a while and can not find these textures.

2. What program is required to edit the Genesis material files in a program like Photo Shop?

3. How can I convert .jpg images to bump maps for use in DS4.5

sriesch

broncomech said:

I have a couple of questions, will ask them all here rather than starting multiple threads.

1. I have the Millennium Dragon Textures installed but can not locate them in DS4.5 install location is C:\Users\Public\Documents\My DAZ 3D Library\Runtime\Textures\DAZ\Animals\MilDragon
I have searched the content tab for a while and can not find these textures.
You have "C:\Users\Public\Documents\My DAZ 3D Library\Runtime" mapped in the Content Directory Manager under "Poser Formats", correct?
In case you are searching for the wrong thing or it's lost in your categorization by accident, try searching for "All Map Gold.pz2" (I believe that is one of the textures.)
After installing you ran the search for new content "scan known directories for files"?
It is possible to delete your content in the content library (I've done it by accident) at which point you won't see it unless you rescan for new content with the "only new items" option unchecked.
If you think your runtime could have gotten messed up by accident, you could try uninstalling/reinstalling the files (probably less likely than other things, but possible.)

broncomech said:

2. What program is required to edit the Genesis material files in a program like Photo Shop?

What exactly are you trying to edit? Image files such as the one used in the diffuse texture can just be opened with Photoshop, you don't need a third program. There is a bridge to Photoshop (don't use it since I don't have Photoshop), were you thinking of that? Or something else?

3. How can I convert .jpg images to bump maps for use in DS4.5
If you just mean you want to apply an image as if it were a bump map, you don't need to convert anything, you can just directly specify the file for the Bump Strength parameter.
If you want to try to make a more realistic bump map out of an image (for example starting the with diffuse image), that depends on what you are starting with, what you want to achieve, and how realistic you want it. You are faking it, so you aren't going to get a perfectly realistic bump map starting with a texture of course, but sometimes faking it is good enough. If it's just a grainy texture for example, you could probably just use it without modification, or you could convert it to greyscale and play with the contrast and brightness. I'm sure there are an endless number of other modifications one could make.

broncomech

Thank you,
I was looking in the wrong place for the dragon textures, silly me textures are filed under Pose, I had not thought of using the search function as it is new to me.

I will give Bridge a try and see if that works for me.

The bump map is for an older Poser file, I will attach the instructions so you can see the original process for conversion.

sriesch

I don't remember the reasoning behind the conversion using Poser 4 offhand anymore, however since you are using DAZ Studio, you should be able to just use those .jpg files directly without having to do any sort of conversion at all. Try loading the object, and verify that one of those mentioned .jpg files is being referenced in the Bump Strength parameter, and if it isn't, just browse to the file and select it and you should be good. (If explanation of how to do this, let us know.)

DaremoK3

Yes, broncomech, I can confirm Sean is correct.

Poser 4 used a specialized proprietary bump map system (.bum) which one had to convert all texture maps intended to be bump maps to (An in-App feature with Material settings). It was seriously flawed (inverted wrong displacement channels), and inflated the bump texture file to incredible file sizes (for the time).

It is happily missed, so don't worry about it. No need for you to convert anything. Just add your .jpg bump map textures into the bump map parameter in the Materials Tab, and adjust levels to taste.

broncomech

Sean Riesch, & DaremoK3

I will have to study up on using the materials tab settings before attempting to use this cahracter, nice to know the conversion will not be required.

Thanks for the assistance,

Dave

Szark

Surfaces Pane http://homepage.eircom.net/~neilvpose/ds-settings.htm

broncomech

Thanks for the link Pete.
That one is bookmarked!

Dave

Szark

My pleasure. It really is worth a good read. Neil did and outstanding job there even though it is some years old.