Bump map vs Displacement map vs other.... and is there an simply way to make one?
cdemerit
Posts: 505
Hi..
I've been using some great Jpeg textures on a number of things, but this last one a cobblestone path, looked like a Jpeg on a plane. I've taken the base image, grayscaled it, enhanced the bright/contrast, reduced it to 16 colors, and it looks good, but either it ends up looking like a jpeg on a plane or a whole lot of black smears...
2nd part of the question is there really a difference between a displacement map or a Bump map? seems like they are about the same thing...
And is there a program that simplifies making either of them?
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A displacement map will actually alter the geometry giving an effect which is visible from the side of the geometry.
A bump creates an illusion of depth by adding highlights and shadows on a texture level.
There are some good apps about for generating bump maps from images. one for example is Bitmap2Material by allegorithmic.
https://www.allegorithmic.com/products/bitmap2material
Added to what Razor said I use 16 bit Tiffs for Displacement maps with a small amount of Gaussian blur. I find the makes for a smoother result.
Have a look at Awesome Bump its a free alternative to crazybump.
http://awesomebump.besaba.com/en/Main-page/
It can create height, normal, specular and occlusion maps from any given diffuse texture.
For a nice price payware there is Shader Map 2.
http://shadermap.com/home/
Regards, Bunyip
To add a usage note to the above:
Usually displacement is used only for features that need to pop out physically in profile - veins, big wrinkles, some surface features. Bump is for things like cloth weave or skin pores that will look TOO bumpy when done with a displacement map, or where displacement is really unnecessary and will interfere with the fit of clothes etc.
As such displacement will never be at its best when done with 2D methods; it really needs to be sculpted in a 3D program. Bump, on the other hand, is often just fine when done 2D. We have skin texturers here who have never used a 3D paint program. I've used a sculpted normal map to substitute for bump with good results occasionally (the recent Constrictor is a good example) because normal maps can add detail while still not "popping out" geometry the way a displacement map does.
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/55566 here is an example of 16 bit Tiff displacement maps I made in Photoshop for the ground but yeah I agree with SickleYield above.
That looks nice! Ground textures are definitely something where 2D adjustment might still work with generating displacement, as long as you plan ahead to adjust the "depth" of figures' feet or contact areas with the ground. Which doesn't take that long usually.
Thanks yeah I like how the ground came out. Using 128 or 129 grey as a base for the displacement map makes placing objects on the ground a lot easier but yes the handy spot render tool comes in handy for checking that or for this image I used an additional camera view close to the feet of the front bird and used the IPR. :)
Hi,
Interesting discussion, I have a related question, bumbs effectively change the way the renderer and the texure interact whereas normals/discplacements change the geometry. I read somewhere on these forums that bump maps are more computationaly intensive (which seems counter-intuitive since they lave the geometry alone) and should be avoided for animations. Is this right? Cheers.
Normal maps do not change the geometry, they are just a better version of bump map. Bump (and displacement map) only work parallel to face of a surface or ironically along the face's normal. Normal maps use the red, green and blue color channel to illusion of bumps/depressions at various angles to the face.
and to add, displacement, as Sickle said earlier, is the only one to change the actual geometry, the mesh of the objects. 3deilght can do micro displacement adding more to the mesh on the fly when rendering. In Carrara the quality of displacement is governed by how dense the mesh is. This is why I like Daz Studio when doing displacement. That ground plane of mine isn't that dense for the size.
I'll second the motion for Awesome Bump...with a caveat. It isn't exactly intuitive to use and the author is not a native English speaker, so there are some UI spelling/grammar errors. In other words, it's not a 'polished' finished product, but it is very usable.
Here's a render with maps made with AB.
It has the 'height' map plugged into the Bump channel in DS, normal map plugged into the Normal channel. It's matte lighting model so the specularity map isn't used, nor is the occlusion map generated by AB.
There's a scrrenshot of the AB UI, too.
Bump maps adjust the "height", in effect, and use that to determine the normal. the Normal map sets the normal directly. Normal maps are quicker as they don't have to go through an intermediary stage, but they aren't necessarily superior in results.
Even the install isn't very intuitive... but I'm gonna give this a shot... And thanks all for responding, lots of good info.
Well... I'm about to delete any mention of AwesomeBump from my computer... Between Dll Errors, QT issues, and many other things, It seems to not to want to install or work on a Windows 7 computer... and all install guides say just run it after installing QT... If someone has a good detailed instal guide, I'll give it another shot, but for now....
What version of Qt did you install?
And any specific errors?
And what is your video card?
Another post in the Forums as regards Bump & Normal maps, in case it is of help for anyone scratching their heads about the differences.
Hope it is of help.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/50781/
Regards, Bunyip
If I get a chance I'll try and compile a WinBinary, this weekend. Need to install Qt on a windows box first, as that looks easier than fighting to set up a cross-compile environment.
Although I didn't have any problems with the WinBinary package from the AB site...it runs well under Wine. Look at the log file and see what it says about your OpenGL version (should be right near the top of the file...)
Well, first, I went to the website and downloaded the AwesomeBump 2.1 zip. This contained a bunch of .DLL files and a awesomebump.EXE. Ran the EXE to install, but no install, it is the program, and no .pro file. It gave me a QTcore.DLL not found error. So I found QT and downloaded the "community" version (5.4) . Then when I try to run AwesomeBump.exe, I get this error http://i.imgur.com/qqe59Bz.gif . I find in the Awesombump folder a subfolder of "platforms" and it contains three .dll files of Qwindows, Qoffscreen, and Qminimal. Thinking they need to be manually registered, I moved them to windows/system32 folder and tried regsrv32 them, and got a "compatibility" error. tried cmd prompt and hand install them using regsrv32 in both system32 and syswow64 and got "module failed to load" .
Went back to QT manager and installed 5.02 ->5.4, hoping it would register something... not. No Idea on how to get Plugins.
Tried going back to the linked website, keep getting redirected to a foreign web hosting company... http://i.imgur.com/8eD4vwU.gif
Took a different approach, somehow I found Awesomebump- master.zip which contained a .pro file. Loaded it and tried to run it. Got a list of syntax errors. not even going to go there... too many other things to play with that.
All info I've been able to find on installing it has been barebones, and assumes familiarity with QT. I had not heard of QT until this.
So basically, I need a step by step install directions. Barring this, I can't waste more time trying to get this to work, and I'll find something else, which is a shame, as it looked like a decent program. The Author really needs to work on a simple install process, or find someone who can write a detailed install instructions.
BIG EDIT: I thank you very much for the help, but please don't waste your time trying to set up AwesomeBump for me. After writing the initial post, I went back through the thread, and realized I hadn't looked at Shader Map 2. I installed the demo, made a couple maps and found the ease of use to be worth the $40.00. I can get away with using the demo until my tax return arrives. But thank you again for trying. If AwesomeBump is polished up and a simple installer is assembled, I'll check it out, but for now....
It sounds like a permissions problem...and I just tried the prepackaged binary on two different Win7 machines and had no luck with it. No errors, it just wouldn't run. The same file, will with no problem, run from a USB stick drive, run on Linux, through WINE.
I'm probably not going to be able to do a build of it this weekend, as I need to download Qt to the Windows machine...and it just happens to be the 'media center' computer and a large download just doesn't fly when anyone wants to stream Hulu or Netflix...so I'll need to let it run overnight.
Crazy bump has been good on a Mac but I have found that sometimes I have to invert the values for the surface to pop instead of cave in.
I have found that normal maps can look strange when viewed at an extreme angle and being very close to the surface.
I've had trouble with displacement maps when scaling an object, because the displacement doesn't scale.
And I have had trouble with reflective surfaces (water) when really pushing displacement - strength at/over 100%, dropping it lower than -1 (for minimum) makes the surface look posterized, this is with a 16bit grayscale tiff. The higher numbers (maximum) don't seem to cause a problem most of the time. A lot depends on how much contrast the displacement maps has- more neutral gray tones work better.
I've found some good results using all three (bump, normal, displacement) with not pushing any of them to an extreme.
There is Mindtex http://frozenflamecorp.com/site/pages.php?page=products
I have just downloaded the demo but I dont know how it compares to Shader Map2
The demos for AwesomeBump look great, but ver.s 2.0 and 2.1 crash immediately after starting every time I try to run them. Any tips on getting it to run on Windows 7 64-bit, 'cause nothing I do can get it working.
The demos for AwesomeBump look great, but ver.s 2.0 and 2.1 crash immediately after starting every time I try to run them. Any tips on getting it to run on Windows 7 64-bit, 'cause nothing I do can get it working.
Same here, tried it on two different machines and can't get it to run...but the Linux version I'm running on my main computer is working flawlessly. I'm going to try a new build, once I get Qt up and running on a Windows box, I'll keep everyone posted as to the results of that endeavor.
I had no problems on a win7-64 machine.
Just unzipped the 2.1 "binary" and ran the executable from the newly created folder.
I'll try it on another machine and see if a problem occurs.
Had a suspicion what the problem might be with the 'immediate crashes' so I tried it with only onboard Intel graphics... the AB log file reports "GL3.2 not supported".
(The ancient onboard OpenGL was only 1.4)
Both machines I tried it on have Nvidia cards with up to date drives, so OpenGL version is correct. My problem seems to be some sort of permissions related one...
O.K., I got it working. Problem was with my machine, not with AwesomeBump. I'm using a Dell Inspiron 17R laptop with an nVidia GeForce GT 650M graphics chip, and I just discovered that it had essentially disappeared from my machine (this seems to be a common BIOS problem with this machine and chipset), and my machine was defaulting to the Intel Integrated HD 4000, which AwesomeBump apparently didn't like. I got the GeForce working again and updated, so now I can finally use AwesomeBump. I've only played with it for the last few minutes, but I'm liking it so far.