Hi Everyone,

Every now and then, some developers do some tremendously helpful stuff. CrazyBump is one of those. It's available for Mac or PC and does a fantastic job. 

Click on the image to check out the details.

It's currently free. check it out - your textures will never be the same: http://crazybump.com/forum/index.php

Post your results back here just for fun. Attached is one that I did really quickly. 

Mark

Thanks for the heads up Mark.

Coming from you it must be good.

Ian...

Its free now? Well I use Shadermap Pro:

http://shadermap.com/

If you just need normal maps you can use the free Smart Notmal:

http://www.smart-page.net/smartnormal/

Or XNormal that is free too:

http://www.xnormal.net/1.aspx

I am also beginning to wonder if it is free as I have installed the program but it keeps asking me to select my prefered licence choice which has three choices of $49, $99, or $299 so I am getting a little confused about this.

This is an impressive program. How does Carrara handle the dysplacement maps? Did you use just the normal map for your image?

Also, I don't see the free part. I see the option to buy a licence starting at 49 for the academic licence. the file available for downloading on the forum is a demo version. Did I miss something there?

Hi Benny, Which product are you talking about since there are several mentioned in this thread? The Crazy Bump version isn't giving me any messages. (Mac)

I downloaded the latest -- 1.01 for PC.

Maybe a Mac beta? When it was in beta for PC its was free too.

Well, that would explain the difference then. 

I am using the CrazyBump windows 1.101 beta version and as soon as it opens the main screen states that it is a demo version with links for requesting the licened version. I downloaded it via the forums Announcements section.

The free beta version of CB was before the version 1 is out... so I dont think that is the case now. You can try the other that I pointed, SmarNormal and XNormal are free. Shadermap Pro is only U$ 20

Quote - The free beta version of CB was before the version 1 is out... so I dont think that is the case now. You can try the other that I pointed, SmarNormal and XNormal are free. Shadermap Pro is only U$ 20

Thanks for the note about those others as I have downloaded them and I am going to try them out tomorrow (a bit late over here now in the UK).

Mark, about your image: How does Carrara handle the dysplacement maps? Did you use just the normal map for your image?

(sorry to ask twice, but it seems the question got burried in the CB version discussion)

Quote - Mark, about your image: How does Carrara handle the dysplacement maps? Did you use just the normal map for your image?

(sorry to ask twice, but it seems the question got burried in the CB version discussion)

If you open the material editor as normal and look at the very top you should notice a second tab titled "Displacement". Hit that tab and then you can place your images etc in in the normal way. Though it would be a good idea to check out the manual to get a good understanding of how each displacement adjustment works in line with each other.

Correct. You also multiply in the Occlusion image into the Color channel.

That's not exactly what I meant, I'm sorry for the lack of clarity.

I know how to add displacement maps, but it is my understanding that in Carrara the quality of displacement depends on the fidelity of geometry.

So what I was asking was more along the lines of how many polygons did you use on that plane to get the displacement working correctly. (and whether you needed to use displacement at all for that image)

I did use displacement in addition to the normal map since I wanted to have water in low areas. Carrara has the option to do the subdivision so even low poly geometry will look ok. In my image it's just a simple plane primitive. I set height to .01, the samples to 60,000 and had the adaptive steps to 6.

Mark

Thank you! This is very impressive.

Very interesting and informative post! Not to muddy the water further, but here is a quick render I did to illustrate an idea I had for simulating a burning torch. I used a free rockwall texture set from the PhotoSculpt site. The application uses two photographs taken twenty degrees apart to generate its texture maps. There are 10 free sets of maps available for download.The sets all have diffuse, ambient occlusion, specular, depth(displacement), and normal maps. The wall is a simple plane primitive. I rendered this in C7Pro, so I'll have to fire up my other computer with C8Pro to try the normal maps.

The PhotoSculpt app itself looks very interesting, and in addition to generating all those maps can make a 3d mesh to go with them. http://www.photosculpt.net/ I intend to try the demo when I get a new higher rez digital camera.

Nice render 50 parsecs.

 

It's nice to see that some fairly complicated geometries can be managed without a lot of complicated modeling.

Thank you Kixum.

yeah, it's amazing how a scene with that detailed geom would take 100X as long to render as the same scene with lo-res obj and norml maps IMVHO.  I tried one in poser and it went like a flash.

Nice tool, really does nice displacement and normals so far in Carrara. May well be work a purchase!