Attached Link: WIP vascular tex

I am trying to create my own highly vascular Bump map for a series of bodybuilder images I am creating. Does anyone know how to create a smooth rounded vein. The ones on the lower abdomen look right but those on the shoulders look weird. I have noticed on other attempts that if I use a white brush on a the black and white Bump map it looks elevated in some areas and depressed in others. I believe that I need to adjust some Bump map settings. Any Ideas????

heyas; if it looks elevated on, say, his arm, and indented on, say, his side or leg; that isn't something wrong with your bump map. it's the lighting. you see, whether the bump appears to stick out or dent in doesn't depend on the actual bump map. it depends on the lighting. unfortunately, there's really nothing you can do to fix that. you could set the bump to -100% strength, but then your shoulders would pop out and your abdomen dent in.

Another thing that can affect the way your brain interprets the bump map is the underlying texture colors. The problem with veins is that they're usually darker than the surrounding skin and that tends to encourage the brain to see them as depressions (though not always). Could you give us some screen shots of the successful and unsuccessful veins? Might give us some ideas on how to change the visual context. My first guess is to make sure there's a gradient across the width of the vein, so that the center is noticeably lighter than both edges -- that might provide a good depth cue. But what you're noticing, as heyas says, is standard bump map behavior -- to your brain it sometimes looks protruding, sometimes indenting, in itself; all you can do to get the illusion working in the right direction is fiddle with the context, light and color.

Thanks I am going to play with it and get back to you

I should add that, theoretically, you can force the veins to stick out for sure in Poser 5, using displacement maps instead of bump maps. This actually pushes the geometry out, instead of relying on optical illusion. Can't say I've tried a displacement map yet, and from what I've seen in this forum it may not be all that easy or straightforward to do -- but if you have 5, you should definitely look into it.

I don't have poser 5 yet. Quite frankly I am not overly impressed with what I am hearing about it. It sounds incredible powerful but slow and I am not sure that I have the patience for it right now