bagginsbill opened this issue on Jun 29, 2007 · 236 posts
cherokee69 posted Wed, 04 July 2007 at 8:48 AM
Quote - Three points on that topic:
Nothing stops you from editing the displacement map. You could tone down or remove the muscle areas. (Make a backup of the original first, of course)
Nothing stops you from opening up my pz2 shader files in a text editor and changing the displacement map image name to a new one. Then you could make your own map and automatically load those. Again, make a backup of the original pz2 first, or even better copy it to a new name of your choosing.
Go edit the matmatic script and add more maps to the displacement calculation. You could then introduce multiple maps that you can control independently.
I'd go option 3 myself, of course. I even wanted to do a displacement veins coloring parameter (you know - make those big veins blue) but the disp map includes muscles as well and they turn blue, too. The muscle definition map should be in a separate file.
With matmatic it is trivial work to add even a dozen separate maps to control different features. And, they don't all have to be high-res either. Also, with appropriate scaling and offsets, they don't even have to cover the entire material zone. I'm thinking about making some eye wrinkle displacement maps. When I do, they will not cover the whole face, just the region around the eye. This will make them almost free as they will use very little memory.
All very good ideas. When I was looking at the displacement map, the first thought I had was to remove the muscle areas leaving only the veins until I noticed that some of the veins on the body run through the muscle displacements and for me, removing the muscle displacement wouldn't be too easy without leaving ragged edges on the veins or leaving areas of muscle next to the veins. Then I thought about a new layer where I could redraw the veins, but, I can't draw that smooth of a line. I also noticed that there are few or no veins on the legs. So, my only option is to leave it be and use it as it is.