Planet bump map tut's

Posts

• -MerlyN-171 Posts: 0Member

  April 2007 #2

  

  I'm not sure if I get what you are meaning. Just converting the imagemap to grayscale and do some editing on it isnt what you want, right? Please try to be more specific.
• fluxfire181 Posts: 604Member

  April 2007 #3

  

  No what i mean is creating the planet surface with bump mapping instead of using an image map like say you wanted to create earth you would grab a nasa flatened out earth pic and rap it round the planet. I want to create a planet surface using bump mapping.
• -MerlyN-171 Posts: 0Member

  April 2007 #4

  

  Hm, ok. Try as I mentioned above. Take your flatened out image map and convert it to grayscale. adjust the exposure, if you want to have the mountains/valleys more pronounced. Then apply this bump map in your 3D software to your planet object. Maybe check if its working better if you use displacement instead of bump mapping (dunno if there's such a thing in lw). You probably'll need a quite high res image for the bump map.
• MadKoiFish9834 Posts: 5,333Member

  April 2007 #5

  

  Accualy there are elevation maps made for the earth mars and venus and well as a few others. I dont know why you would want to bump map without the textures colour. Wne doing a earth mesh most dont even use bump map except o clouds for certian effects. unless tyour refering to say taking a plane and displacement mapping like the Nasa flybys.
  
  To do bump maping its a simple as putting a image into the material slot or area for bumpmaping so a tut would be a bit pointless. Im sure lightwave has tuts built into the help file to show you how to apply settings to materials. If your wanting to make a hand made displacement map for terrian shaping then youll have to manualy paint it lighter the taller your results.

  Each day we draw closer to the end.
• fluxfire181 Posts: 604Member

  April 2007 #6

  

  The whole reason i wanted to do a bump map version instead of an image map is cause i wanted to create planet surfaces that look nothing like earth. Is it possible to do that with the earth image?????
• [Deleted User]2 Posts: 3Member

  April 2007 #7

  only if you distort it heavily and do some serious editing on it.
  
  but, as some of the other posters have already pointed out, bumpmaps are only good for simulating the mountains and stuff on a planet.
  
  If you want to do an entirely different planet I'd suggesst you get yourselves some imagemaps from planets like mars or venus and try to combine them with some parts of the earth map.
  
  you can then turn the resulting image to greyscale and have a wonderful bummap for your newly created diffuse map.
• MadKoiFish9834 Posts: 5,333Member

  April 2007 #8

  

  Yes, if your wanting to create a totaly diffrent planet bump maps are not going to cut it unless you want your entire globe to be one colour.
  And seriously a bump map will just ruin the scale, I used bump on a wip I had and the settings were like 0.01 and it still was to drastic and the maps were mostly light greys so low visual change.
  Example of a sphere with just a bump map
  
  
  Sample of a earthlike planet with no bumps but a mess of huge maps. and 3 or 4 spheres. BTW its a custom mapped planet, granted its only 7k in size so its a bit of meh close up.
  
  
  There is a tut on sfm on making a custom map
  http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/member-tutorials/6099-interactive-planet-creation-tutorial.html
  You will never find a tut out there that is a hand hold stroke by stroke instruction manual.

  Each day we draw closer to the end.
• [Deleted User]2 Posts: 3Member

  April 2007 #9

  additionally what Mad had to say, I'd like to add that bummaps do work better on rocky planets, like moon, asteroids, or the like.
  
  you might wanna pick a value between 1 and 5 depending on the size of the celestial body you want to (re-)create.
• aszazeroth176 Posts: 209Member

  April 2007 #10

  

  I'd say that in order to get the most out of a bump map (really again depending on what you really want) the best combination is to -combine- it with a color map. Hardest part is to keep the bump down in scale in order to get grand planetary scales. Try something out, show us and we will guide you if possible. Here is an example of a non-earth planet with a custom bump map,
  
• IRML253 Posts: 1,993Member

  April 2007 #11

  

  I use no bumps at all on earth, unless I'm very very close I'll use a tiny bit of elevation map, barely visible, because bumps do tend to ruin scale of any planet
• aszazeroth176 Posts: 209Member

  April 2007 #12

  

  For orbital shots that are quite a bit from the surface with very clear curvature, I totally agree with IRML and I too never enable bump for such shots.
• fluxfire181 Posts: 604Member

  April 2007 #13

  

  MadKoiFish

  You will never find a tut out there that is a hand hold stroke by stroke instruction manual.

  
  Wasn't expecting to find one that tells me stroke by stroke. Just one that covers making alien planets using an image map of earth.(now that I know it can be done)
  
  Hum ok so bump maps for habitable planets is a bad idea but a good one for moons and roids. Right then i will use the Tuts that are available and see what I can come up with.
  
  Thanks
• [Deleted User]2 Posts: 3Member

  April 2007 #14

  glad to be of help^^
• IRML253 Posts: 1,993Member

  April 2007 #15

  

  fluxfire wrote: »

  Wasn't expecting to find one that tells me stroke by stroke. Just one that covers making alien planets using an image map of earth.(now that I know it can be done)
  
  Hum ok so bump maps for habitable planets is a bad idea but a good one for moons and roids. Right then i will use the Tuts that are available and see what I can come up with.
  
  Thanks

  try and think about what you're saying though, you can't make another planet using an image of earth - the landmass is too distinctive, you'll have to chop up the map a lot first, then do the same chopping for your spec maps if you have oceans, the best way I find to do an alien planet is to just get a map like mars and rotate it to an undistinctive bit, do a colour change and add some clouds
  
  if you look at this image here the planet I made doesn't even have a colour map for the land, I rotated the cloud map and used that as a subtle land map, and I think it works fine
  
  www.startrek-wallpaper.com
• fluxfire181 Posts: 604Member

  April 2007 #16

  

  Hum ok thanks for the info on that. I will definatly implement that when i start working on my first alien planet. Very nice image BTW!