How can I use a graphics file as a bump map in Bryce? E.g. in the Poser Fun Stuff is a Universal Man', which is the Nude Man plus many extra morphs including ajeans' morph for his legs and hip; but to complete the jeans effect he also has to be rendered with a special texture map , and I have heard of bump maps in Poser but not in Bryce. Bump maps in Bryce would be very useful and should be in the wishlist.

You can import bump maps into Bryce just as you would import a texture map. The only difference being, import to a channel other than that used by your texture map. For instance, you import your texture map into channel "A" and select the diffuse and ambient circles and adjust the sliders appropriately. You can import your bump map into channel "B" and select the bump circle and adjust the slider appropriately (this one is rather sensitive - start out around 10% and go from there). You can do the same with specular maps, etc... to fill all four channels, if you wish. Generally speaking, though, specular and reflectivity components are handled well within Bryce - better than you could do with a map. Remember that all the rules that apply for your texture map apple for your other maps - i.e. if you had to flip your texture map on the x axis, flip the bump map as well. Also, note that (in Bryce 3) large maps can cause large headaches unless you have large amounts of RAM. If you have problems, try loading the bump map BEFORE the texture map - or - reduce the size of the map to 1500x1500 or less. I don't know if Bryce 4 handles this better or not. Hope this helps, -ScottK

I just tried it, with Bryce 3.1 . I textured the ground plane and a cube with a black-and-white cartoon that I had made a while ago. With the cartoon as diffuse color texture map, each face of the cube was a copy of the cartoon, and the ground plane had an infinite tesselation of the cartoon, as expected. But with the cartoon as bump map, all that happened was a line of `black' (i.e. a bump map groove) along the +X edge of where the cartoon shound have been; on the ground plane this produced an infinite pattern of thin parallel lines. Neither had apparent depressions in the shape of the cartoon image, although the sun was at a low angle.

Hmm... You've got me stumped on this one. Have you tried other mapping modes? (i.e. object, world, parametric) It seems to me I recall trying to bump a Bryce primitive before and having similar problems. I don't recall a resolution. Usually, I map onto imported OBJ's. I give up. Next contestant? -ScottK

Okay, bump maps. Pretty simple really. You can load the bump map into the B channel, or you can load it into the alpha channel in the picture editor itself. 1)Go into the 2D picture import area. 2)load up your texture map i nthe far left box. 3)load up your bump map in the middle box. (You'll need to say yes to delete when prompted. 4)See the little half whit, half black dot above the thumbnail? select that to pic the best one that displays the lines you want to rise as white. 5)Don't worry about how transparent the final product looks, when its wraped around an object its not transparent 6)hit okay and now make sure the bump button is in the a channel and set it to the right hight. this should work on anything properly, without the hassles caused with using the a and b channel.

Ah, Thanks Ali. I'll have to try that one out sometime. -ScottK

I again tried to give a Bryce 3.1 image a pattern of bumps read from a graphics file bump map, but I could not. I found that, in the Materials Lab, if one of the columns A B C D contains a texture read from a graphic file rather than a (texure made from noise in the Deep Texture Editor), that column is only obeyed if it is selected in the top part labeled Color', rather than in the lower parts labeledValue' or Optics' orVolume'. I can use a graphic file as a color map or an ambience map or a transparency map, because they all appear in the `Color' part; but not with bump. This is a nuisance. Bump maps can be used in Poser (a *.BMP file renamed *.BUM, I think), but not in Bryce 3.1 . E.g. I have 3 Poser models of backpack devices; easier than separately posing several backpack straps as multisegment uncooperative serpents of articulated parts, I would like to make their backpack straps in a Bryce scene by painting them onto the wearer's color map <<>>. PLEASE!!!

The end of the last message should read thus, but the messager didn't like angle brackets nested 3 deep:- ... onto the wearer's color map AND BUMP MAP.

If I read correctly in the Bryce3 and Poser3 manuals, bump maps are handled opposite of each other. In other words, where one (Poser) has the black areas of the bump map raised, the other (Bryce) reads white as raised. When importing to Bryce it should be easy to inverse the bump map or else just assign a negitive bump value. Remember that in the material editor, the far right box will tell you what your bump output will be. Haven't dug into the Bryce4 manual yet so I'm not sure if it handles the bump maps the same but I suspect it does. Hope that helps