Need help to make bumps

Comander

Hello everybody,

I ask about working with bumps.
More and more we see the work with blue bumps - textures.
I would learn more about it and wanted to know:

a) What do you call those blue bumps that look like reliefs?

b.), can I create them yourself with a photo program?

c.) Does anyone know of links on how to create these bumps?

Thanks for the answers in advance.

Khory

a) What do you call those blue bumps that look like reliefs?

I think perhaps your talking about normal maps. You would need a program that generated them in some way. I use genetica but there are others out there.

Regular bump maps are actually gray scale and there are nearly as many ways to create them as there are people who do. Just how would also depend on the graphics program your using and what the bump map is for. If you want to do regular bump maps there are quite a few tutorials on the net explaining how.

Comander

Thank you for your comment.:-)

Alowe49

I chose the easy way, in whatever paint program you prefer, import the colour maps and simply change them to grey scale then save as a bump maps. Then it's a bit of trial and error for the settings, checking the results with close-up renders. You may need to change the brightness and or contrast of the bump map depending on the skin you use. Remember to use the same changes and settings on each of the bump maps to minimise joints between them.

V3Digitimes

Bump and normal maps are complementary.
Roughly speaking, Bump maps, black and white, include only how much a point is raised out of the surface.
Normal map will also tell you not only the how much the point is raised, but also in which direction (you have "4" times more informations). So it includes more information.
If you're a beginner, I would say begin by bump maps, go on normal when you master bump.
To do normal, the general method is to have a low rez model, and an high rez version full of details of this model. Then some softwares can extract the corresponding normal map (from Xnormal which is free to Zbrush wich is expensive).
Some people also "fake" normal maps -they are not from an high rez model but extrapolated from a texture" using the Nvidia pluggin compatible with Photoshop (if I remember well) CS6 and above.
Or you have modules such as crazy bump to also fake normal maps.
Results provided by using high rez/low rez comparison are generally far better than the ones "faking" normal maps, but these last one can also contribute to better renders.

Comander

Good idea - Thank you