What connections are standard for image and bump maps in the material room?  I just started paying attention and noticed that some MAT poses don't make the connections.  So, I'm trying to figure out how to do them manually.

Image Maps:

Diffuse_Color
Specular_Color (or is this just for shiny parts like nails and inner mouth?)

Bump Maps:

Bump

Trans Maps:

Transparency
Transparency_Edge

Is this right, and is that everything?

And what do I set all those values to?  Like Bump, what do I set that to?

This is all off the top of my head, so don't hold my feet to the fire:

You can use image maps (or generate procedural textures) plugged into the diffuse_color node. This will be the main texture that is applied to your mesh.

Specular_color is, as you say for the "shiny parts."

Bump Maps will give an appearance of roughness, uneveness, etc to the surface. They are greyscale maps where white is the highest and black is the original surface. They do not actually modify the surface, just it's appearance.

Displacement Maps actually cause polygons in the mesh to deform. They work the same as bump maps with black being the original surface and white being higher. You must check  the displacement maps box in your render settings for this to work.

Transparency Maps are often based on a greyscale alpha channel made from the texture. Black in this case is invisible while white is opaque. Transparency edge determines the opacity at the edge of a transparent object and is somewhat determined by the "thickness" of the object. Look at a thin wine glass and compare it to a thick water tumbler.

As far as settings go, I'd highly suggest you take an evening and play around. Most settings are so dependent on all the other settings so that there are no hard & fast rules to tell you. Apply your materials, render in the little window, make a change, render again and slide the little triangle back and forth to see the differences. Make a big change, render and compare. It won't take you long to see what the different settings do and how much is too much. Have Fun!

HTH,

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I'm not sure that you have the difference right between bump maps and displacement maps. Displacement maps work as you say. They actually shift the surface. You could take a flat panel and use a displacement map to give the height difference between bricks and mortar, and any shadows would come out in the render. Bump maps do things to how light reflects from the surface, I think something to do with the normals, and I've never quite figured out how they work. I can't see how the black to white range can be the same as for displacement maps. Both are affected by the greyscale and the associated numeric value. If you're just looking for small-scale texture effects, such as the difference between a sheet of plastic and a woven material, you can get what you want with a bumpmap. If the height differences are going to be noticable as height differences, the displacement map is the way to go. One of the things which can make a big difference to the look of the material is the specular setting. Not just the brightness of the reflection, and what colour it might have, but the size. A smooth surface will have smaller, brighter, reflections. A woven material, because of the weave, will give a bigger, less-bright, reflection. Also, the softer the reflection, the more it tends to pick up the colour of the material.

Antonia Tiger,

You are absolutely correct in your interpretation of how bump maps and displacement maps work. Bump maps only change the orientation of the surface normals causing the light to reflect least for the black and most for the white areas with the center or neutral grey value being what you would see without a bump map applied. These are simply two-dimensional patterns. There is no change to the actual physical mesh, flat is flat and round is round and no shadows are cast by the bumps. Think of the fresnel effect where the edges of a sphere reflect less light and go dark while the front of the sphere reflects almost all of the light.

Displacement maps alter both the orientation of the normals and the position of the surface itself resulting in a texture that actually has three-dimensionality, in combination with the two-dimensional patterns mapped on it. Here again, black is least reflective and lowest, white is most reflective and highest. These surfaces will cast shadows. Displacement maps alleviate the bump map only problem that can occur when you see a highly irregular surface yet the edge appears perfectly smooth. Obviously displacement maps are a lot heavier come render time than bump maps, so it pays to save them for closeups or terrain generation and use bumps for less prominent objects.

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