Hi Everybody!,

This is pretty much my first ever post in the forums, so I hope I'm not asking for something thats been asked for a hundred times before (I had a good search first ;-)

I had a go at creating a texture in Photoshop just last night and managed to import it into Bryce and was quite pleased with the results. However, I was kind of 'making it up as I went along', so i was wondering if you know of any good online tutorials which could show me how to do it properly?? (I've searched through the tuts here - and found some great ones for other topics)

What I'm interested in is:

1. How to setup the initial image - sizes to use, any tips or tricks I should be aware of, best formats for exporting from Photoshop; that sort of thing.
2. How to create/use a greyscale image to use for bump height - i'd like to see some relief in the texture.
3. How to import it all into Bryce so I can use the greyscale image
4. Saving it all out as a Bryce material so I could stick it in the 'Free Stuff' section!

So, a good all-round, Photoshop/Bryce texture creation/importing tutorial. It doesn't have to be complex, though I don't mind that either!

Cheers and thanx in advance,

Darren

**sizes to use
**-Pretty much best to stick to what 3D terms as "the power of two" which is 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048, etc. Also, in Photoshop if you keep it to those dimensions, the "render clouds fauture will be automatically seamless. (I use the heck out of that filter in texture creation)

**best formats for exporting from Photoshop
**I would say save in the Photoshop (psd) file format. Bryce can read it, its uncompressed, so you don't need to worry about image cimpression artifacts, and as you start making more textures in photoshop, you will want to keep the layers intact for (sooner or) later tweaking.

What version of Photoshop and Bryce are you using? (this wil lbe important pertaining to greyscale image creation and importing into Bryce)

Also, size may depend on what you are planning to do with the texture.  If it is intended as a seamless texture and is not highly detailed, you may be able to get a better result with a smaller image.  If it has a fair amount of detail (that might make it unrealistic as a seamless texture ... for example, a wall with the exact same cracked area every few feet, then you are better off using the largest image you can manage.

As to the gray scale bump map, some formats will allow you to save your grayscale as an alpha channel ... in which case the bump will be imported automatically when you bring the image into Bryce.  Otherwise, I generally save the grayscale as a separate image with "bump" in the name so that I can find it.

The best way I know of to save materials is to create a new library in Bryce and then export and post the entire library.

Thanx for your both of your replies!

AgentSmith:  Thanx for the tip on the render clouds filter and I didn't realise Bryce would read .psd files directly either. I'm using Photoshop v9 and Bryce 5.5

Rickymaveety: It'll be a seamles texture, but highly detailed so I'll use a large image size. I'll have a go at adding an alpha channel to use as the bump map. 

If I create the grayscale image (how do I do this in fact??), then can I make the 'bumps' higher by, say, increasing the contrast of the greyscale, so there is a greater difference between the light and dark areas?

Cheers,

Darren

*If I create the grayscale image, then can I make the 'bumps' higher by, say, increasing the contrast of the greyscale, so there is a greater difference between the light and dark areas?

*-Yes. Yet, some images might not need a seperate bump map made, the color map will suffice fine to drive the bump, especially since Bryce bump map value can be hand typed in to go past 100 and up to 999. (so you might not need that extra contrast)

But, making a greyscale image for the bump has its advatages especially if a certain texture has lighter points on it which are actually lower not higher. For instance dark painted metal, with scratches on it which appear lighter than the paint.

Also, I will make bump maps of anything that is very rough/rocky. Just using the color map as the bump map gives it too much high frequency bump and it loses its overall definition. (imo) So, in Photoshop I will take the color image of the rock, desaturate it, and apply the "Noise>Median" filter with a value of 1, then usually a gaussian blur of 0.3. This "simplifies" the image without over-blurring it.

Cool! I didn't realise that it was possible to increase the value of the bump beyond 100 by typing a value instead - another great tip! (I assume this would be true for other parameters in the Materials lab as well) The texture I have in mind is quite 'blocky' with many areas of geometrically shaped colour on it. I'd like these to appear raised so, in this case, I guess using a greyscale image (from a channel perhaps?)  would achieve my objective.  I'll try out what you suggested with the Median filter too.  

On a related issue then, could I also make a terrain from the greyscale bumpmap and then apply my texture to the terrain? This would then achieve a real raising of the object itself as opposed to just the perception of a bumpy surface though using a bump map?So much to learn, so little time... :biggrin:

Cheers!

I am looking forward to seeing some of these textures you are working on. Let us know when you have something to use.

Will do! In fact, it looks surprisingly like the texture you've used in your avatar! Is that from a picture in your gallery?

**I assume this would be true for other parameters in the Materials lab as well
**-Nope, only the Bump attribute can go to 999, everything else is 100 (for some reson)

**...could I also make a terrain from the greyscale bumpmap and then apply my texture to the terrain? **-Not just yes, but hell yes! I've been doing that for years.

Very basically, I take the image (texture) desaturate it completely, lay a layer above that image in which I fill with middle gray (rgb all = 128), and set the opacity to that gray layer to about 90%-normal. Now this serves as a Terrain Map.

The gray layer is beacuse you need very little of the original image to create a Terrain. The Terrain will serve as the main form (low frequency bump) and your regular bump map will serve as the detail (high frequency bump)

In some cases, the resulting Terrain carried enough good detail, almost no bump if no bump at all was neccessary.

Funny you should mention that about the texture in my avatar. That is an image I did a long time ago and after I decided to use it for my avatar I realized it wasn't in my gallery here. But then I also realized it looks pretty chintzy at any reasonably large size (see image). I am currently in the process of re-doing it at a higher resolution for display here. Unfortunately the main texture on the head doesn't scale up very nicely. I've been going through a lot of what you are involved in with my efforts to try to recreate it from 2D Photoshop textures. Not too successful so far but I think I am learning some things from this thread that might help me. So... we will learn together! -- Jeff in Arkansas

"...Not just yes, but hell yes!" LOL !! I liked that! :biggrin:

Hey, thanx for that quick tute on creating  bumpmaps from greyscale images - thats so cool!  I'll be giving this a try real soon. An observtion I made when creating my texture was that Photoshop defaults to creating new images in 16-bit colour, yet when I tried to load it into Bryce, it would only accept it if it was in 8-bit - is that correct, or am I doing something wrong?

zescanner - thats a great image! I love that kind of stuff! I hope you can find the time to redo and pop it up in your gallery. It would cool to see that texture in more detail. Also loved your image with the floating rocks in it too - perhaps a refresh for that too one day? I'll post up my texture when its done so we can swap notes!

Easiest to stick with 8-bit RGB to start with. The images you would work with will be 8-bit RGB anyways. (i.e.; a photo of a brick wall.) And, yes Bryce 5.5 only accepts 8-bit...*well, on the surface anyways, there are ways around that.  ;o)

Now, Bryce 6.0, you can save your Photoshop image as a 16-bit tiff, and it will open it directly.

*As far as Bryce 5.5 and earlier goes, if you REALLY want to create a 16-bit grayscale terrain in Photoshop and use it in your Bryce, we were fortunate enough to have one of our forum members (bikermouse) here create a little utility that will convert a 16-bit grayscale .tif into a .pgm, which earlier versions of Bryce will import as a 3D mesh, but treat like a Terrain. And, yes it will go through in all its 16-bit glory.

The utility is called tiffer and you can get it here;
http://www.angelfire.com/droid/bikermouse/page2.html