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© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
I think in retrospect I could have made it clearer that I was following up on a discussion which was about (wash my mouth out!) Daz Studio! DS has channels for Bump and Normal maps, but it wasn't clear if one had precedence over the other, or if you could use both - and my simple test showed that you can use both and it shows both.
As Carrara only has one bump channel which can use either bump map (with a standard texture map) or a Normal Map, you need to have an operator such as Add, which you can then combine the two types of mapping and again, both will show up.
Oh... you did that render in DS? Yeah... as you're mentioning, we can add or multiply them together in Carrara to have them both work - often requiring the intensity slider being raised a little higher. I do this every once in a while to blend more than one map together.
Anyway, I was wondering which you used - but I guess you didn't ;)
Another neat thing about Carrara, we can use the texture maps to make masks to use in the Mixer for any channel that can take maps to use different maps for different parts of a mesh. I do these things foir fun - and I do these sorts of experiments a lot. Sometimes just using fractal noise as the mask, other times creating a mask, other times using a map in the folder as a mixer. Funny how often I see a beautiful mixer map included with a product! ;)
Great work, Head wax.
So, you go surfing in February! Tonight we're looking at wintry showers on this side of the world.
Such is life!
Pleasure Marcus, always fun working through things in the 'real' world.
Just had a great wave then, it's been around 33 to 40 here every day - the back is sunburnt just right ;)
Even the sharks are sluggish in this weather....
sorry, I led Phil down the dark path .....
he did suggest I go there first after all
you are a fallen woman, is there no help for you Ms Digit?
I was actually referring to PA products that had both bump and normal maps and in D|S could not see much in fact any difference using one other or both, if its an add effect it would confirm this.
to me it is rather pointless just increases maps for VRAM.
Yes, if the maps are doing the same job then I wouldn't think there was a need for both. A better use would be to use normal maps for larger bump effects, major wrinkles, etc, and a bump map for finer details like pores and skin texture.
Thank you, Phil! Your explanations are always clear and subtle.
well are different maps but if only add could not see why it could not just be the same map layered in an image editor
Right. I was just asking because he was showing the results of the two in the same render. Blending Normal map AND Bump map is not something I would often do, unless they're entirely different results that I want to blend together.
I often find it quicker and more flexible to do the blending right within the shader, unless I know already exactly how I want them blended - which, then I could just do it in an image editor. But when I'm doing this sort of thing, my mind is usually off on a tengent - thinking about adding this characters vein maps to this characters bumps... so I just do it in the shader with either Add (if the second image is white on black - Add will brighten the original by the white result), Multiply (darker parts of each image darken each other), or a Mixer, where I can blend either gradually, like using a 1-100 value, or using a map to control the blend. do a lot of both. Of course, we ca use other functions as well. It's actually quite endless... and can get really fun the more we do it.
My Genesis Orcs are like that in a few channels - various maps used to drive gradients against other maps and overlays and such... just for fun. But for Orcs, I can then very easily change an entire look with a few quick flicks in the shaders - making a totally different result, which works nice for that situation.
Of course by now I'm not even talking about Normal or Bump... so I'll stop babbling now
I came across this free app a short time ago http://www.pixaflux.com/ and have yet to play with it. It does some pretty cool things with normal maps, including combining them, which I don't believe can be done in a typical image editing program (aside from nVidia's Photoshop plugin https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop).
Kick Ankle! Thanks cdordoni! We can actually bring OBJ right into PixFlux and bake all necessary PBR materials, which I'm confident I can use with the native PR engine in Carrara - I do that already.
PixaFlux Wiki
PixaFlux Video Tutorials
i could use a render pass to convert M4's vascular maps to normal maps?
sure I just had a play with the one's available here - on m4's head - was pretty err odd though
not sure if they were lined up properly
normal maps have flavours,. check in the options of your software,.
Dirext x style (positive y)
Open GL style (negative y
hope it helps ;)
a vascular normal map lift the silhouette?
dont need the whole body, but his forearms, back of his hand,
normal and bump maps only create the lighting effect of raised/lowered areas.
Displacement mapping is the only thing which will effect the physical mesh shape. the problem with that in carrara is "Micro displacement" and carrara doesn't have it, so for big things like buildings or rockfaces, carrara's displacement is great,. for tiny stuff like skin wrinkles or veins, it's not so great,. it's dooable
Normal maps will look better (apart from the silhouette) and be less demanding on resources,.
as for vein's,.. those shouldn't have a big effect on a silhouette anyway,. try using an image editor (push brush) to add small raised parts of the edge,. that should be easier and quicker.