ZDG, the making of 'paint and brushes'. simple displacement and texture maps.
ZarconDeeGrissom
Posts: 5,412
I had been asked to post some of my stuff here, tho I feel that it may be premature as I'm not entirely ready to be making full fledged scenes yet. To say the least this computer keeps running out of ram as I work on complex stuff (Scenes, outfit set combinations, etc).
Four weeks ago I started out with playing with reflections and surface properties, with the "Casting Reflections" project. Attached is a preliminary of that project. I had to suspend that work, as I ran out of ram when I attempted to make the set bigger to completely contain the cameras (so I could do horizontal not just vertical 4:3 renders). The closest wall is literally dancing the right edge of the render, and the far wall stops at the left edge of the attached render. (7 Days and counting)
So I am focusing on the other stuff a beginner needs to at least be aware of, like home-made displacement mats.
Part 1 of 5
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So this was what I was playing with this weekend, as I was dealing with rouge shadows and face morph basics.
Ultimately I want to make a one-of-a-kind surface tile (including inscriptions) for the "Casting Reflections Hall" floor and walls. This is much more then just picking a Defuse texture, as I want allot of it to be mirror-finish stone (Basalt, Manhattan schist, Amphibolite).
So to start with, I tried a few cloth-weave patrons to figure out the gray-color scale of the bump/displacement maps, and how thin the features could be and still look good. To keep things simple I used an 8x8 pixel form factor (16x16 pixel in the more complex patron) copied across a 256x256 BMP image. As for the diffuse patron, it is just a blue square 256x256 pixels in size with a black edge, so I can see where the patron repeats on the article of clothing I tested them on.
Attached is the base Diffuse texture used in all of these tests, and a color scale I made in Paint to assist me.
Part2 of 5.
So Here are the four example displacement mats I tried so far, I'll post example results in part 4.
Feel free to use these patrons I have uploaded as is or modified as you see fit, they didn't take long at all in Paint to make. In fact anyone can make similar simple patrons like this with a little fiddling with that image editor. (I hope Ms Paint is no different in windows7 from all the previous versions of 98se threw XP)
I left the displacement strength at 30% as that was what the swimsuit was originally set to. The original displacement and bump map was for the entire suit, so it all had to go when I started tiling things up.
Part 3 of 5
And here are the results, not bad for a first time test/attempt. I'm actually stunned at how well this came out without much if any adjustments for the test. I basically made the test patrons in paint, then applied them on the swimsuit as the displacement map image. Set the tile x&y to ten, and hit render.
Writing this and Implanting the example Icons took most of this morning.
*png for these were a little large (800+kB each), so I'm trying jpg for this one 'results' post. I don't want to brake the form, lol.
Part 4 of 5
So in closing for the morning, here is 'G2F6W1022' (Sorry, no normal name) in the new WIP Casting Reflections Hall. Thank you Wilmap for the epic cloths and stunning cloth patrons. I managed to copy a bit of the Wilmap shirt patron onto the 'JS Pants' in this render.
Thanks Jaderail and Novica for the invite to the Art forum. So I am off to fiddle with the patrons a bit more, feel free to comment please.
Part 5 of 5.
Well it has been somewhat of an eventful day here, as it is now the end of my day.
Here are three more variations of one of the former posted displacement maps. enjoy.
I held off on posting this one, as the original did not exactly match up to the edges. With a little bit of tinkering, I got the thicker thread patron to fit in a 16x16 pixel patron. Here it is.
I think I have enough of a vague Idea of how the pixel brightness works, to start tinkering with custom engraved tiled floor patrons now. Tho I may add a few more cloth textures as well.
And a few more cloth patrons for today. And as a hint, you don't need to stick to simple cross-hatch patrons, there are other angles as well, like "105" using a 45 degree vertical thread to hold things in place.
Replaced the JPG render of the 45thred, as the detail was lost by the jpeg compression.
Here was a fun thread-pattern to make, inspired by a Roman Villa floor tile pattern. It is still based on the 16x16 pixel tile.
Edit; This patron is not directly Roman, It was from what I could remember of a section of floor I had seen on "Time Team" years ago.
Roman Villa and Bath House Inspired Thread patron Displacement Maps. And a Border that is in the works.
One of these I spent all day yesterday looking for a photo of the original Greek/Roman tile mosaic it was supposedly based on, and am yet to find it. Accordion to quite a few sites, these are "Roman Keys" or "Greek Keys" patrons, even If I am yet to see the original tile floor for the one double-line Key (KeyMesh04008).
I must express a considerable amount of gratitude to all the 'Diggers' that spent an incredible amount of time tediously clearing off the ancient floors to revile these amazing works of art from the past, so they could be documented and shown to the world in context. Archaeology is far more then just pooling artifacts out of the ground, as the surroundings of where the artifact is found, is often more important then the artifact itself.
What's going on Z, jammin on the bass lately ? C your hard at work. Very cool patterns, I'm going to try one on speaker cloth, and try others in future projects. Image in thread 4 is cool, like the patterns on clothes, and wall reflecitons. Keep it buddy, will kick in from time to time.
Thanks for the complements. I made most of these because I wanted a simple patron for different things. And some of the other things I've been working on.
Like this preliminary of Roman Villa and Bath House Mosaic Borders (the weave part apparently is called a "guilloche"). Allot of these I will double in size eventually, after I get this computer some more ram, and an OS that can handle that Ram.
I should toss up a patron of a metal grill with round hole grid, shouldn't I. I'll bake one up now... A simple opacity map of sorts, or a diffuse color overlay. One of these round-hole speaker mesh patrons should work well (Normal or negative).
Here is a few more dot-patrons as I work on my first cup of coffee.
So in separate news, that Ram, SSD, and win7 should be on there way. The Ram and Win7 have shipped, and I don't know about the SSD yet. (Edit) apparently while I was posting this, the servers were catching up to reality, everything is good with the SSD as well, lol.
It's been longer then I wanted it to be to make a post, in fact Win7 has been fighting me tooth and nail with Everything from simply installing a Mouse driver (Kensington Marble Mouse) to simply opening up OpenOffice to wright this.
More on topic, I have found that the version of MS Paint included with Windows 7 is on the edge of non usable for making anything from schematics to simple texture patrons.
In Win7 Paint, the two color selections is deceptive, as it is no longer a color for left click, and another for right click. It is only the one selected of the two, for left click only. no more right-clicking to draw a separate color.
Also the line option has been nurfed to the point of complete uselessness. In the past I could use the line option for anything from single pixel dots threw lines of my desire length. Now the line must be at least two pixels long, and you must click the thing multiple times just to convince the thing that you really want the line there.
There is a fix if you have the old install of XP on another drive, All you need is that “mspaint.exe” file from the 'system32' folder, and the know how of creating a shortcut for the thing, once it is copied to you new install drive. Don't ask, I will not be providing copies of that file, as I paid over $280 for my XP disk (It's mine).
Notice when I clicked the text item, it highlighted as if it was selected, however when I went to select an aria to put text in, the thing just drew a line. I hat to click the text item three times before it completely switched off of the pencil thing. I had selected red for the text color after that before typing anything, and it is still black. That is not going to work.
well I have a million things to fix with this pc, till later y'all.
I hate to say this but MS sort of gave up on Paint because most users have moved to at least GIMP for 2D editing now, if not all the way to a Full PSP or a version of PS.
I have the Gimp-a-nator installed. Just like Everything else, I need to click 'Open' on that stupid window before it will open up that epic-nes.
And yes, GIMP works wonders with right-click copy&past; for multiple layers, unlike ALL the versions of PS that I have been tortured with. I played with GIMP back in 2002 (for NASA Retinex), and went back to PhotoDeluxe for placement of PCBs in a chases (or furniture layouts in a house). My mom still cuts up graph-paper and dose it that way, lol.
For simple B&W schematics (Not Gray-scale), MS PAINT from 98se or XP, is still the simplest to use for that (Aside from grabbing a pad of 10squar/inch graph-paper and 0.3mm pencil). I don't open up SPICE (Tina-Ti) or Eagle (PCB layout tools), unless I already know where I'm going with the design.
I am very impressed with the progress of GIMP, don't get me wrong. 'Job well done' to the coders and the 'man pages'&'getting started guide' crews.
(edit)
I installed GIMP v2.8.10 on Thursday morning, then spent less then two hours reading up on the 'Toolbox' options at the getting started pages, and I was placing PCBs in boxes again. It really was rather painless, unlike all the versions of 'CS' that I threw out after a month of failure with adding a second layer to anything.
I read this...
http://docs.gimp.org/2.8/en/gimp-concepts-layer-modes.html
then installed gimp, then used the tools as I read up on them. (for Example)
http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tool-rotate.html
PhotoDeluxe has been replaced after two hours of study. Sold.
I'm a PSP snob. I was first introduced way back in the Amiga 1200 days when PSP was the only full 16mil color option we could get for the new video the 1200 supported. I followed it all the way to version 7 and then they sold it off to the new guys. Why does every new Company think they HAVE to change the interface on a program? I have my trusty old PSP v7 right here for fast editing and that Monster PS CS6 for other work, now if I ever read these two books on PS I just might learn to use more than the basic functions. But I'm in no hurry. I do not do all that much 2D editing. In my Amiga days I was a huge 2D nut. I'm more 3D now. My 3D even goes back to the Amiga, my first toy was Imagine 3D.
Wow ! Sorry to read, your having issues with Win 7 Z, I did all the windows & drivers updates, my OS works flawlessly, knock on wood. Every program works fine. Hope you get all sorted out. Wishing you well :-)
Jaderail; that's what they did, they changed the interface, and the book was useless as the menu items I was supposed to click on the layer-thing to add a layer, was gray. in any case, your v7 probably is much a better interface wise then CS6 (I threw that out back in 2012/2013).
awesomefb; My biggest difficulty is that by default, Admin Has no privileges at all with any drive past 'C'. All the updated MoBo, USB, Mouse drivers were downloaded to separate HDD/SSD's on this comp (physical data drives D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, and X). If you are staying in 'My Documents', and never use other drives (HDD or SSD), you'll never have a problem.
http://www.zarcondeegrissom.org/comps/OSWATT.html
Hi Z, you've baffled me, Lol !!!! Did you try to tweak admin rights in Bios ? Make sure all drives are identified in Bios. I have 2 internal SSD, 1 internal hdd and 5 usb externals. All work together, transferring data. Well, hope you get it all figured out. As the saying goes, if all else fails, reinstall windows.
I disabled that UAC on Monday, just to get the USB port driver to take, so windows could see tha mouse, lol. It's still giving me that annoying questioner every time I start Any Program.
I didn't mess with the Admin account settings yet, tho I did have to right-click each drive, go to the 'Security' tab, and low and behold no body had anything checked. After fixing that by checking thinks off, and hitting apply [an hour later after the window had sifted threw everything on the drive].
In any case, this is not a Daz issue, it is a Win7pro64bit default instal settings issue. Daz Studio 64bit (excluding DIM) and Winamp are the only two programs I don't get harassed about starting, go figure. Firefox, GIMP, Notepad, WordPad, Windows Media Player, etc, All give me that window when I try to start them. There is something else in here other then UAC, giving me grief, I just haven't found it yet.
(edit)
"Zone File Checking", hmmm. Where is my Imp when I need him to eradicate something, "Chiptoe", lol.
edit 09MAY2014
removed some deny warning screen-caps to shorten this post.
Hmm very odd behavior. You did of course set your account to the default Admin account. If not your just a user with Admin level use.
The Win7 dvd install apparently didn't set up Any "Local Computer Policy" settings to speak of.
This is for fixing LAN shared executable files, yet it fixed the issue with files on 'this computer' being started from 'this computer' and run on 'this computer'... "This Computer", I needed to put that in a forth time, lol.
1. Open up "Group Policy", Click Start , type gpedit.msc in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
Local Computer Policy / User Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Attachment Manager
2. On the right pane, double click Inclusion list for low file types.
3. Click Enable.
4. Include the file types such as .exe;.bat;.reg;.vbs;.lnk in the Options box.
5. Click OK.
I added ".lnk" as it was the start menu and desktop shortcuts that were also giving me grief. Thanks Linda Yan.
Well at least you took a step ahead. One reason I now have all my PC's built for me now. The OS setups just keep getting more hoops to jump through to get where you want to be.
I needed this chuckle about now, as I am skirting the edge of Sending Windows7 back and throwing FreeBSD into this computer.
In order to do Windows Updates, the Update needs an update.
At Last, a test render. "Casting Reflections" preliminary 64bit set and figures import test.
Now that I have that at least working, I can start on the tile floor patron and getting NGC5257 properly textured onto the back wall.
A slight update on my patrons status. I have screen-caped most of the Time Team S10E02 show at this point, and have torn the inter-web apart for any archeological data on real Roman Mosaic floor patrons. There are a hand full of decent sized photos that I could work with, however ALL the pictures that show the Dinnington Somerset Roman Villa Flor Mosaics are of 'Lacking' resolution and quality.
I cant even make out if the dark borders are Green, Blue, or Dark-Gray. Also it is nearly impossible to figure out how many Tessea across most of the fine details in the center of the one mosaic is. I had hoped to make an accurate 3D model of the Dinnington Somerset Roman Villa Flor Mosaics, however I will be guessing on most of the details based on other mosaics elsewhere. Considering what I have to work with, the two attached pics are as good as it gets.
Dinnington Somerset Roman Villa Hallway mosaic, tile section preliminary.
The grout is to bright with the first toss together, and the colors are just flat bucket fills for the moment. For some aud reason I had to set the tile to '3.03' horizontal by '2.00' vertical for the patron to line up to the edge of the cube for the test. I don't know why it needed that extra 0.03 to make the edge flush.
This patron is the Full hallway width of four red and four gray checkerboard squares width. I had counted between ten and twelve Tessera across for each color section in the archeological trench photos, this patron only has ten Tessera for All sections at the moment. From the looks of what was in the trench, this patron went flush up against the walls along the side with no border, I don't know about the ends of the hallway.
For the Displacement Map, I set the Strength to 100%, and the Minimum/Maximum to "-0.20" and "0.20" respectively. Pleased with the preliminary results, I'm off to individualize each Tessera, and implant real photos of Roman Stone in each one.
same displacement map as before, updated diffuse texture.
I created ten unique over-sized Red Tessera, then copied bits of them into the hundred Tessera base square, giving me almost 100 unique bits of Tessera. I then copied that base patron and rotated/flipped it into the each red segment of the over-all checkerboard patron.
I also swapped the light and dark gray between the grout and the gray Tessera, so it would start to look mor like the real deal. Enjoy y'all, I now have a hundred unique gray Tessera to fabricate from real stone.