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Do bump maps actually do anything?

SteveM17SteveM17 Posts: 973
edited December 1969 in New Users

Many times while messing around and experiment with DS4 I've tried altering bump maps in the surfaces tab and it never seems to change anything. What purpose does it serve and how do I use it?

Comments

  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited February 2013

    Umm.. they do stuff like this when used right.

    See all the Detail in the Face, Arms and Hands? That's all done with Bump and Displacement maps.

    CLICK Image for Full Size.

    Genesis_Jade-2.png
    1000 x 1300 - 2M
    Post edited by Jaderail on
  • JimmyC_2009JimmyC_2009 Posts: 8,891
    edited December 1969

    SteveM17 said:
    Many times while messing around and experiment with DS4 I've tried altering bump maps in the surfaces tab and it never seems to change anything. What purpose does it serve and how do I use it?

    You probably need to change the Bump Minimum and/or Bump Maximum as well as the Bump Strength. Bump mapping is widely used because it has very little overhead by using 8 bit greyscale images. Think Black down, White Up, and use the Max and Min sliders accordingly. If the entire image is overall grey, you wont get much effect without increasing these sliders.

    Both Bump and Normal maps are an optical illusion, and don;t actually change anything. Displacement on the other hand, does displace the mesh at render time. You wont see any change in bump, normal or displacment until you render anyway.

  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    What he said. ^^^^^

  • Herald of FireHerald of Fire Posts: 3,504
    edited December 1969

    SteveM17 said:
    Many times while messing around and experiment with DS4 I've tried altering bump maps in the surfaces tab and it never seems to change anything. What purpose does it serve and how do I use it?

    In short bump maps alter the way the surface responds to light. Think of how light catches in dips and grooves and reflects off of bumps. Bump maps capture that by faking the lighting effect. The surface remains flat, but it will look like it has more dimension because it responds better to the light.

    Normal maps are another form of bump map, but instead of just up and down, they can reflect light in all kinds of directions based on the vectors in the map. In that way they're sort of an advanced form of bump map, but also a bit harder to create as a result.

    If you give us some information on the settings and the sort of bump map you're using, we might be able to help you get better results.

  • SteveM17SteveM17 Posts: 973
    edited December 1969

    First of all I didn't know the results wouldn't show up until I render, so that may explain a lot! I thought they'd show up straight away, like when you change the colour or texture in diffuse.

    Can you use any jpeg as a bump map, like you can with textures in diffuse?

    Clearly I have a lot to learn!
    Below is a screenshot, where I have done a basic render of Genesis, with it's standard bump map min/max altered. I can't see it making any difference at all. Is it the case that it might only show up if I'm doing a higher detail render? I only use quality 2 (openGL with shadows) because my poor old computer freaks out at higher settings.

    There should be a "Daz Studio for Dummies" book for people like me.

    bumpmap.jpg
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  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    You also need lights in the scene and to use the 3Delight render engine not OpenGL to show detail like this.

    Yes in theory you could use any Grey scale Jpeg for a bump map.

  • SteveM17SteveM17 Posts: 973
    edited December 1969

    Szark said:
    You also need lights in the scene and to use the 3Delight render engine not OpenGL to show detail like this.

    Yes in theory you could use any Grey scale Jpeg for a bump map.

    I see. Last few times I tried rendering using 3Delight my computer wasn't powerful enough and kept crashing (at least I think that's why it crashed). So it looks like the bump map elements of DS will have to wait until I can afford a better machine.

    Are there any other things I should ignore when only using OpenGL? So I'm not wasting time with settings that make no difference to my end result?

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Post your Advanced Render Settings which should look similar to the image below as some settings can be lowered to avoid crashes.

    OpenGL renders are pretty poor and will not show a lot of surfaces properties when rendered. I aviod OpenGL totally.

    AdvancedRenderSet.jpg
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  • SteveM17SteveM17 Posts: 973
    edited December 1969

    Here are my settings (I have no idea what most of this means):

    settings.jpg
    659 x 902 - 64K
  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Here you go try this http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/15210/#222187

    The only setting I can see you dropping is Max Ray Trace Depth to 0. 1 or more are for things like reflection and refraction so for now try 0.

  • SteveM17SteveM17 Posts: 973
    edited February 2013

    Cheers!

    (Typed "cheers" wrong, doh!)

    Post edited by SteveM17 on
  • Tramp GraphicsTramp Graphics Posts: 2,411
    edited February 2013

    IF rendering in Daz using the built-in 3DLight engine is causing the program to crash, even with minimal settings, you might want to think about downloading the free stand alone 3DLight engine, and rendering out a RIB file from Daz to render in the stand alone 3DLight. This is what I have to do, and I get some rally nice renders. IT takes some learning because the stand alone 3DLight is not a GUI program. It's a Command User Interface program.

    Post edited by Tramp Graphics on
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