Hi,
I just have one last question about bumpmaps. Say I was making a new texture map for Victoria 3 and I needed a bumpmap different from the default one, could I simply turn a copy of my new texture into grayscale to get a new bumpmap for my new texture map?

Thank You
(P.S. If you want to elaborate please feel free to do so.)

yes :) (though youmay want to boost the contrast a bit after making it greyscale)

In P5 you can just plug the texture into the bump canal. No need to make a greyscale and less memory used. If nesesary, you can adjust the contrast with math nodes. Stefan

The thing is that you may also get some unwanted effects. It isn't just a black and white of the texture. For example, if you have a texture with black eyebrows and beard those areas would be recessed in the bump map. It works okay in general terms but there is a lot of specifics that don't work.

One of the reasons I dislike textures with painted on eyebrows. :-) But you are right, a special made Bumpmap is better in many cases. Just consider freckles. They should not show in the bump. Using the texture as bump (sometimes inverted) works only for textures with have not much of color variation. stefan

invert the image before you change it to greyscale.....

invert the image before you change it to greyscale..... Why? This is bad advice (though I've seen it time and time again). I'm not sure where this idea originated, but possibly as a lazy way of trying to address the issues mentioned above (ie. some dark areas (like a mole) need to be raised instead of lowered). For the most part, your texture will already have raised areas lighter, as they need to be on the bumpmap (look at the wrinkles on your knuckles). If you simply invert the texture before creating the bumpmap, you'll break all those areas. Things like lips and nipples are normally darker than the surrounding skin, but they are also rendered on top of raised geometry, so you can (sometimes) get away with just leaving them as-is, but otherwise, you should lighten those entire areas... this keeps the wrinkles on the lips correct (inverting it would make them incorrect). In general, here are some things to look for: - remove any freckles. - invert (or brighten) any moles that you want raised, otherwise remove them - lighten nipples, lips (see above) - remove any veins (or lighten them if you want them raised) - remove any makeup (dark eye-shadow should not make the eye-socket area sink in) ...basically, anything darker than the surrounding area will end up as a dip/valley, anything lighter than the surrounding area will show up as a bump. So just look over the entire texture and figure out what needs to be adjusted and/or removed.