Bump Maps
ewangrant1
Posts: 0
First post here, been using Daz for about a month. Expanding my experiences by getting into experiments with bump maps for more realistic textures. Have to say it is not going too well.
Can you scale bump maps, or by default are they scaled along with diffuse image map when you change quantity of horizontal/vertical tiles.
Just placing a bump map as standalone on a default 1m primitive cube - I can usually see this. Add a texture and it becomes less obvious, to the degree that I wonder if anyone else would even know there is a bump applied. Zoom out a bit and look at a floor plane, no-one would know - I can't see any difference! I've tried various settings to little effect.
I save two renders at 1920 x 1080, one bump on and one off, and compare in a cheap man's photoshop. Seldom I can detect the difference in final renders.
Is there a sort of ball park figure for visible results or is it all dependent on camera distance and texture complexity?
Thank you for taking the time to reply.
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Comments
I love bump maps - they're great for giving texture depth to a render. As for your questions:
No, you can't scale bump maps separately from tiling within DAZ itself. You'd have to select a separate bump map you'd modified in an image editor if you wanted the bump to be different from the rest of the tiled textures.
Default bump map settings don't offer much. You have to turn the bump strength way up, as well as the minimum and maximum - on default, they're almost zero. Also, bump maps seem to work best in black and white, with very little grey.
I'm at work - I can show you some examples when I get home. There are also many very helpful folks here who can explain better than I can, too. I hope you find the help you're looking for. :)
What I do when I'm having trouble seeing the effect of the bump is turn it way too far up (maybe 10 or something) until I can see that it's actually working in a tiny spot render, then turn it back down to a more appropriate level once I know what I'm doing. Also remember there are three parameters, not one; there are positive and negative bump values (those are the ones that will default to be so tiny you perhaps can't tell they are in use) in addition to the parameter that holds the image that one would probably set to 100%.
BTW, I'm not sure but I think there was a tiling shader somewhere that might allow you to have a bump map at a different scale from the diffuse, if you used that shader instead.
Bump maps are 50% grey. Black and white maps are displacement and specular maps
quick demo,
1 bump map no texture
2 texture no bump map
3 combined
only done as a trial render so very lores settings
Thanks "chohole", your example just answered the question I was about to ask.
How Daz3D studio applies textures to cube primitives, copied for each face, or wrapped around the entire object some how.
Have some basic cubes with a stone photo applied to them, and was about to drop them down from 7.1MP to something more reasonable for my lacking computer.
The bump-mapping was the other thing I was thinking of give them stone cubes for more realism.
Is white or black raised, or not matter as it is the texture that counts not the direction the water is going? hmmm.
The Tiler Shader http://www.daz3d.com/tiler-shader-for-daz-studio will let you adjust tiling separately for different maps, or you can roll your own with Shader Mixer.
Usually white is raised and black is lowered 9or for the case of bump maps, is shaded as if raised/lowered) but that isn't set in stone - white is the maximum value, black is the minimum value and shades of grey are spread between them. It would be silly, but there's nothing to stop you making the max a negative number and the min a positive number (the values are in cm, by the way) in which case black would be raised and white lowered.
And all Primitive objects in DAZ Studio use the Wrapped texture format. They are not UV mapped for Flat map texture files. You could Export the Obj and UV it yourself if needed. Free UVMapper would do it.
Thanks again, I need to go play with a cube and some BMP graph paper a bit. to see how much gray variation I can give them cubes and still have them looking like smooth polished surfaces.
As for them bumps not being visible in the viewfield or preview render, lighting, camera angle, gray-scale contrast of the bump-map, bump-map settings, a shadow in the way, and other "Electron-Voodoo" can be to blame, lol.
"UVMapper" thats where I got stuck last weak when I was reading about applying textures to primitives to make a prop.
I thought the fella was talking about something built into Daz3D studio, lol.
Bump and Displacement both are a function of the 3Delight engine, they can only be seen properly in a full render or spot render. In DAZ Studio.
interesting quick intro to the actual use of "Tiler Shader for DAZ Studio" over at youtube, titled "Tiler Shader for DAZ Studio - first look "
looks like each element that is an image file, texture/bump/displacement/etc can be set to different patron scales, if I understand that correct. Or is he using something else to set that brick size and window overly separately?
That's yet more stuff to buy on the third, it's on sail now, however even if it goes back up to ten-ish, it's still worth it.
Zacondeegrissom, yes the Tiler Shader will let you tile or scale any image channel, independently of all the other image channels.
As the others have said, you need to do a render to see the effect of the bump, and it will be relative to how far/close the camera is, and the direction/intensity of the lights. Bump does not really show well if your are just using the default light. I've found I like to put my object in the scene, with the camera angle and the lighting I am going to be using in the final render, and I will do a test render, or multiple test renders with the diffuse image set to none. Then I mess around with the bump parameters until I am seeing the effect I want and then reload the diffuse image for the final image.
Amazing responses, and so quick. Think I will fall in love with this place, asking questions until you all put me on mute. :)
Edit: Just did some test renders, I've got bumps! Thanks again. I would have taken a long time to think of turning the positive and negative up that high (around 3.0), with the defaults so low you think it must be a very sensitive dial.
Test image attached, too high on the sackcloth but good on the rusty sphere.
Sweetness. Yall are so much farther ahead of me. I think I just figured out somewhat haw Daz3D dose the warping of a cubes with a bmp, tho the labeled sides for another program are all wrong, at-least it lines up to the edges, unlike my first "t" test made in Paint, lol.
I have a potential sketchpad like a 'coloring book' for cubs now, lol
Yes I will be getting that bump-map-tool on the third, so many uses for the plugin. I'm off to read about some UV stuff, as I am not going to be doing that for spheres and cylinders, I want something better then PhotoDeluxe or Paint for that.
"ewangrant1", that is incredible, I am impressed with the pics.
The Tiler Shader is only 1.99 regular price if you are a Platinum Club member. Check out the PC if you plan on buying a bunch of stuff. The membership can pay for itself fairly quickly when you are just starting out.
Looking good Ewan!
yea, I should have done that before spending over $200 for figures, cloths, and morphs, lol. Silly me. Next month I can do more, I need to pay off that new engine they put in my jeep.
P.S.
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Is the correct layout for Daz3D Studio cubes primitives.
User TIP: If you need real relief in your render, bump is lighting based only and does not move the mesh at all, it fakes it, look at the edges of items to catch the fake part. You can try this.
Move the Bump map to the Displacement channel instead. Displacement really moves the mesh so is true 3D that will match from surface zone to surface zone. The drawback is the mesh must have enough divisions for the mesh to distort smoothly. So low poly meshes do not Displace well. I often run Bump and Displacement maps both on the same items, you can get some great details in your items that way without modeling it in the mesh itself.