I tried various bump maps - black , grey, white lines, black and white background, but the rendered result is always the same and is no different from the one without a bump map. What am I doing wrong& Thank you for listening to my lament.

rendered:

bump maps:

What is your unit of measure set to in Poser?  Is your bump map also set to a gamma setting of 1?

hborre posted at 4:13 PM Thu, 21 December 2023 - #4479435

What is your unit of measure set to in Poser?  Is your bump map also set to a gamma setting of 1?

As for gamma I did some experiments, thank you for the idea

SIDE 1 of the beetle

Preview:

rendered with no bump, just diffuse, nothing else (how come I get some relief?):

Now I take this bump map (the lines are grey and blurry)

rendered with alpha from render settings:

rendered with alpha 1

now I take this bump map (dark lines, sharp)

rendered with alpha to render settings

alpha 1

As you can see they very much the same. I was trying to make the furrows deeper but no luck.

SIDE 2 (the belly of the beetle) - the same light, I turned the beetle, not the camers
preview

greyish blurry bump

alpha from render settings

alpha 1 (in fact this is without indirect light, but with and without IL they are roughly the same)

bump map 2 (dark sharp lines)

alpha from render

alpha 1

To make the lines appear deeper you will need to use the displacement channel. Bump is for the illusion of depth based on lighting, but it doesn't actually give any real depth. Plug the bump map you made into the displacement channel and try it. Keep in mind that you have to turn on use displacement in the FireFly render settings for displacement to actually work.

Did P_2014 have that object parameter to limit displacement ? I was trying to 'displace' a ground-sheet to make low-poly 'grass lawn', could not get it to 'grow'. Changing the displacement limit made a field of 'Elephant Grass'...

The best way to 'grow' grass is using the Hair Room.

https://www.renderosity.com/forums/threads/2633877 This has samples of both displacement grass and hair grass. They were done with an older version, but I think they should still work