...and yup, I've searched here, DAZ and Google but can't get a satisfactory answer - I'm beginning to think it must be a state secret ;)

I've created a character complete with texture and would like to make corresponding Bump Maps for the head and body.

I've read about greyscaling, negative images and adjusting levels but nowhere can I find a clear or comprehensive way of doing this - everyone seems to offer different advice.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated as I'm tearing my hair out!

The quickest and simplest way is take your image and grey scale it. 

In photoshop 6.0 - Open an image. Go to the Image Menu -> Mode -> Greyscale. Do a save as. 

If you are using Poser 5, 6, or 7, here is another way.  Connect the "Bump" to the "Image Map" in the same manner that you connect the "Diffuse_Color" to the "Image Map".  You will, no doubt, have to adjust the "Bump" setting to something lower.  This might be considered unorthodox, but what the heck,  it seems to work just fine for me.

Thank you both :)

I have read in several places that just changing the texture to greyscale isn't enough and doesn't make a true Bump Map.

I've  looked at several other people's bumps and it DOES appear that they have taken extra steps AFTER the greyscaling to get theit end result...

Any other ideas would be welcome too ;)

Typically a simple greyscale conversion isn't enough. What happens is that darker things would sink into the skin and lighter things would pop up. This is compounded by things such as uneven lighting in the photo reference, etc. In general, if you have a good base texture to work with, you can make do with simply converting to greyscale and then adjusting a few things.

Moles and freckles shouldn't sink into the skin. A mole might even be raised some so they should be neutralized.

Eyebrows shouldn't sink into the skin (dark eyebrows would do so in a simple greyscale conversion) so you have to invert and do a lot of tweaking about the brows to make them work.

Nipples shouldn't sink so you have to do the same thing.

Same thing with body hair of any type.

Then there is the uneven lighting which has to be killed. What might look okay on a texture map can look like garbage on a bump map.

Hope that helps some

Ghostofmacbeth - Thank you SO much for taking the time to post this, it really does help :)

Instead of doing a greyscale, consider using channel mixing instead. When you do a desat or greyscale, most image editors just do a weighted average of the rgb components. But in something like skin, most of the detail is actually in the blue channel of the image and you want to get as much of that chan into your bump as possible. With chan mixing you can control this to get a higher quality result.

My .2c anyway...

Thank you too - I'll try playing around with this :)

Open the UV Map, for the Figure or Prop you want a Bump for, with Photoshop/  Then Paint over it; keepng in mind that white areas will cause bump and Black areas will do nothing.  Then in the Material Room create a new Image node, load your Bump, and plug it int the Bump node of the Poser Surface.

You may also decide t use the DIssplacement node.  This is very similar to the Bump node, but actually changes the shape of your mesh; rather than adding effect through the render process, like with Bump.

Thanks Angelouscuitry, I'm getting some varied ideas to try :)

Your welcome, I think my suggestion is the most basic, hands on, do it yourself method.

If you look over in DAZ they have a make bump action for Photoshop 7 and higher. After running the action simply save the file as a BMP, then outside of Photoshop change the extension to bum. :scared:

I think a part of the problem is that the files called "texture" maps give a false idea. They don't have any texture information they are in fact colour maps. They can be used as quick and dirty maps to give texture but they may be completely wrong. For instance a piece of cloth, may have a plain colour or pattern printed on it, but that is not the texture of the cloth. If it's silk it will have a fine texture, sacking will be course, regardless of colour. So one set of files contains the colour maps and the other contains the texture. As out lined above the bump or displacement maps don't use colour data, they are a greyscale map with the black = none through to white = full, stepped up through the shades of grey information onto the object. If you look at your hand the skin colour information has very little to do with the skin texture, which is why I called greyscaling the colour map a quick and dirty method. Some of my darker veins aren't raised at all. If you wish to create a good bump/displacement map you need to look at the surface texture and create a map of that. I think of it as a topographical map with 255 layers, black is sea level, grey shade 1 = 1 step up, grey scale 2 = 1 step higher, and so on up to the highest mountain which is white. Of course you don't need to use every shade of grey, you can decided what steps to use by your choice of grays.

Definite bookmark

Quote - If you look over in DAZ they have a make bump action for Photoshop 7 and higher. After running the action simply save the file as a BMP, then outside of Photoshop change the extension to bum. :scared:

From what I could tell, the "make_bump" action just changes existing greyscale maps to a Poser 4 compatible format.

Another tip i can offer is that in Photoshop you can preview what your bump map will look like rendered by using the 'emboss' filter. Filter --> stylize --> emboss.

cakeone has a great tutorial on making the skin look realistic.  Its been around for years and has always been a staple for all my renders

Lilybelles - Why is it you want to apply a bump, natural skin deformation?

I have been playing P6 for a bit on this.. I dont claim to know what Im doing... but through trial and error, ive learned that the best result is this that Ive found for what I like..

1 open your texture imgage in a photo editor,
2 convert to greyscale
3 change image to NEGATIVE... (here, the moles and raises on skin always seems to be white(r) now, which is what you want.
4 save and name whatever --just add "bump' to the original file name, and stick it where ever the file name is.... so i know its a bump ...
5 in poser, open the bump, connect to the "bump" or "displacement" nodes. Ive tried both, .. reset the default value to .005, and adjust from there. the default .08 is waaaay too much. use .005 whether bump or displacement...

what I do, is i unattach the texture node in the material room, and play with and adjust the bump on the model before I even attach the texture. this gives me a good render of wht bump with no colors so I can see if it need to be cranked up (value) or down.... the number value is real senitive. my .005 setting will get you to see what i mean, but ive never used anything past .007 or .008

give it a try
;)

raz .. The negative image only is bad because it also would raise things like pores, wrinkles, etc. That is why you have to do part negative and part normal and manipulate them in Photoshop.

It's not like raz's theory is flawed, I think dips and bumps are the idea.

Anyhow, if you're unsatisfied with the level of Dip, or Bump, then you can open Photoshop's Image > Adjust > Levels dialog.  The two lower sliders will control the black and white extremeties.  In other words if you move the left hand side slider toward the middle, then your image will no longer have %100 black pixels, rather it's darkest value will be a shade of grey.  You can also stop an image from having %100 white pixels, with the right hand side slider, in the same fashion.

Quote - Then Paint over it; keepng in mind that white areas will cause bump and Black areas will do nothing.

This is actually wrong. The correct info is that neutral grey (50%) is the 'do nothing' part. And Blacks < 50% dip while whites > 50% bump (you can flip this by entering -ve numbers in the bump sliders of the material). Which is why you get the issue that Ghostofmacbeth is talking about. A simple image invert will make wrinkles, which are dark into light shades and they will bump up when you want them to dip down.

So doing separate selection ranges for the various parts and painting some of it by hand is pretty much the only way to get accurate bumps. A simple invert will fall apart at any kind of medium/close up of shot the skin. Levels also will affect the whole skin in undesirable ways if you don't do proper selections first.

Yep tekmonk. That is what I was saying. :)

*" This is actually wrong."

*Woops; thanks for that correction, I was thinking Transparency!

Levels would still work to raise dips, and lower bumps though.

Wow! Thanks for your input everyone :)

I guess this goes to show that there ARE no hard and fast rules and it's all going to be a matter of trial and error after following a few basic guidelines.

On a semi-related topic, was wondering how to make a specular (similar to what V4 has) for Mil 3 and earlier characters? It looks very similar to a bump texture  but appears to have a greater color range / wider Photoshop histogram profile. Thanks in advance.

I don't remember what V4's specular map looks like but I don't like ones that simply look like a bump map. When I make a specular map I try to base it on places where I sweat more. Those maps that are simply a greyscale of the texture are just plugging it into something without truly analyzing where people have more sheen.

The V4 specular maps look like they are modified bump textures. The darkest areas have about the same value as their bump counterparts but the midtones and highlights (for lack of a better term) are brighter and the image appears to be sharpened.

Since the highlights on the bump and specular maps have similar shape and position, then as you mention they aren't terribly accurate. But into my favorite renderer the addition of that map compliments the bump map nicely when applied to the specular component of a SSS shader. Pores and surface reliefs become visible and tangible elements of the skin.

So any ideas how to bring up the mids and highs while preserving the lows? Thanks in advance.

At least they did that then :) I looked at them but it was a while ago. A very basic way to do it would to use Photoshop to adjust the curves (or paint shop pro or something else, not sure what those would call it). Levels would work to some degree but curves would be more accurate. You would have to lock the curve points at 25, 50 and 75 and then adjust from there, bringing up the darks and lights. It is hard to explain without showing but it is pretty easy (if you use photoshop). Good luck.

Thanks. Will try the curves 'cause the levels don't get me close enough.

Pinging For Knowledge

You can build Bump and Specular maps easy from within Poser using Math_Functions nodes.

For Specular Maps => True White is max Specular, and true BLACK is NO Specular. For Bump Maps => True White is max Bump, and true BLACK is NO Bump.

In the example shown, you will see that the higher Math Node builds the specular map and that the area's like brows go dark = less specular on the brows as it should be.

And the lower Math Node converts the brow area to a more white color. => Brows need bump, thus all light area's get more bump.

The above setup is my default to let Poser automatically create Specular and Bump maps from Diffuse textures. No external apps needed, only one texture to worry about, and easy on the memory too.

And what is more? ? All internal Poser render engines get the same results. ( Preview, FireFly, FireFly Progressive, SuperFly. )

Just remember the basic rules. White = More specular and more Bump. Black = Less specular and less Bump.

Like the brow example? Brows (or public hairs) need less specular but more bump. => That is where the 2 Math function nodes are for.

Best regards, Tony

Ohhh, definitely making notes Tony. I'm not as knowledgeable about all the Material Room nodes, especially the Math nodes, so this will be a good way to learn more about them. Thanks for posting this.

I second Miss B with that. I've been struggling with creating bump maps for YEARS, and this is such valuable information. Thanks vilters.

It's an interesting technique but - as I'm sure BB would say, it's wrong. You're creating a spec map and a bump map based on the brightness/hue of the diffuse, which isn't how either of 'em work. Sure, it gives you a pair of maps but they are still wrong. Bear in mind also, that the maps you create this way are entirely dependent on any baked in highlights in the diffuse map, which is completely ridiculous.

Looking at the maps produced above, what earthly reason is there for the wildly different bump values across the skin? There's nothing I can see that relates to a real world example of skin. Likewise, the specular; why on earth would the upper torso and the tops of the feet have greater specularity than anything else?

Sorry to pee on your cornflakes but it's just plain daft.

You're right its not physically correct nor a general solution but used carefully it can help blend a mat into the scene. IMO its easier with simple textures like a brick wall or floor boards.

@ SamTherapy Hi, the above procedure is correct. The problem is that most Diffuse maps are wrong.

To get the best results from a Diffuse texture converted into specular and bump map, you have to remove all build-in specular and only maintain the skin (or cloth or prop texture color) variations. => Retain color variation but remove all specular from the Diffuse texture <=.

=> => => But you have to do that anyway for clean SuperFly renders.<= <= <=

In the above example? I did this for the skin but not for the hair as it will be covered by either a prop or dynamic hair anyway. (It only serves some preview test renderings).

Best regards all, and many thanks for the compliments. Tony

SamTherapy posted at 9:11AM Sat, 22 December 2018 - #4342291

Sorry to pee on your cornflakes but it's just plain daft.

Eww..

tonyvilters posted at 7:10PM Sat, 22 December 2018 - #4342299

@ SamTherapy Hi, the above procedure is correct. The problem is that most Diffuse maps are wrong.

To get the best results from a Diffuse texture converted into specular and bump map, you have to remove all build-in specular and only maintain the skin (or cloth or prop texture color) variations. => Retain color variation but remove all specular from the Diffuse texture <=.

=> => => But you have to do that anyway for clean SuperFly renders.<= <= <=

In the above example? I did this for the skin but not for the hair as it will be covered by either a prop or dynamic hair anyway. (It only serves some preview test renderings).

Best regards all, and many thanks for the compliments. Tony

Erm, no. Imagine you have a "perfect" diffuse texture with no specular burned in. Now, it just happens this particular texture is of a person with definite tan lines from a bathing costume or bikini. Or, even someone without tan lines as such, but pale areas on the skin - armpits, inside upper arms, buttocks crease, underside of breasts - where the rest of the skin is tanned, or even slightly tanned. That's not even accounting for nipples generally being darker, even on someone who is pale skinned all over. You're still going to hit the same problems.

This thread should not have been resurrected. It's from 2007 and I spent much of that and the subsequent 3 years fighting this exact nonsense.

I dare anybody to make any sort of sensible bump map from this.

Also a correct specular map of this would be an absolutely constant value so if you were to do ANYTHING whatsoever to derive a spec map from this, it would be unimaginably wrong.

Thanks, BB.

There you have it, ladies and gents, just as I said.

Don't like to say "I told you so" but...