Did something similar to this a while back in the form of a steel shield. I've since gotten better at the techiniques of greyscale modeling in Photoshop. This example is MUCH more simple in design to my steel shield. But, it shows how if you can create a good greyscale terrain and use seperate image maps for the major channels (texture, bump, specularity, diffusion, etc.)you can get a much better result in a model and final render.

Attached Link: http://www.annsartgallery.com/eric.htm

There's a program called Fauve Matisse in Gray that I got on a floppy with a modem some years ago. Its abandonware from what I can tell. Saw it on only one shareware site. Great program for gray scale images that can be used in Bryce DTE. It does a handfull of things better than Photoshop, but PS is an overall good program for doing that stuff. I made the seaplants in this image in Matisse.

Hey, the shield was great, and this is very impressive too... Love the texture of stainless steel... Ok, here's a question for you?? How does one device doing crumbled cloth as a grey scale using the terrain editor?? I'm thinking of doing a couple of pics as still life and would like to do big gobs of crumbled cloth, in the background... Any info appreciated... Thanks...

Macromedia bought Fauve Matisse 5 or 6 years ago (and it's successor xRes2). They are now abandoned it seems. The last Photoshop they had to go up against was version 3...and I have never been able to find any versions of Fauve Matisse online anywhere. I think a very good (and free) pic editor/creator is Project Dogwaffle, I've only played with it a little since I mainly use Photoshop. Dogwaffle is still online and available. Project Dogwaffle - v1.0 - 10mb http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Ridge/7251/cyberop.htm Agent Smith

Fabric - Fabric is pretty tough. This pic was done straight in the terrain editor starting with a block of medium grey and barely using the fractal generator set on "Rounded Dunes" at 256x256. I then re-sized the mesh itself upwards (Y) to emphasize the "shape" underneath. The terrain map was flipped, made again and placed beside the first terrain mesh. You would go further with it by painting in detailed folds by hand. I would go up to at least 512x512 for that. And, doing it by hand would basically be required if you were trying to emulate say the general shape of someone's feet under the covers. Careful with the folds though, too much up or down and it will stretch out your texture, making it instantly look like a...stretched texture, very undesirable. Also, make sure your fabric texture is tilable, seams will show up quick if not. The fabric weave itself can't truly be put (modeled) onto the terrain with desirable effects, especially fabric that is crumpled, etc. I've done it and it's just way too many polygons at way too large of a terrain resolution. And, it still looks too messy, then if you resize the mesh upwards, it makes the "threads" spike up. So, I suggest working with a smooth, flat terrain. I also suggest taking some material in real life (remember that?) and posing it the way you want as a reference. White fabric might be best. Agent Smith

AgentSmith-what's the key (no pun intended) to making your greyscale image? I notice that the key does not seem to have the ridges on it. I know increasing the resolution will help, but do you blur your image or anything before bringing into Bryce?

Oh no, there are definetly ridges, that first photo was just a good angle. Look at the "teeth" and top of the untextured key, it's small, but it's there. I used the polygonal lasso tool to "draw" the different areas I wanted to fill with the paint bucket tool (5 areas + letters). BLURRING - Then I used the Gaussian blur filter set to 2.0. I might sometimes go as far as 3.0, but 2.0 seems to give good good results as far as blurring with the smallest ridge. I did no further blurring later on on in the terrain editor. Greyscale image = 512x512. The key has only three shades of grey to make it's five different levels, I then put a small amount of (sandstone) texture around the writing. (filter>texture>texturizer>sandstone>relief=3) But yes, with a hard-edged (select area & bucket fill)greyscale painting in Photoshop, a gaussian blur of 2.0 seems to do well. It also helped in resizing the actual symmetrical lattice, to make it thinner. I took it to 20.48/5.12/20.48 Agent Smith

Thanks for the help. I'm gonna give it a try later tonight. Using the sandstone filter is a cool tip. Thanks! Arleen

Hey Agent, thanks very much for that cloth tutorial there.. Haven't been around for a while... I will definitely start fooling about... I know that cloth is difficult to emulate, and definitely you got a great pic up there... So, this is a good start... Mostly I want to use it as a backdrop for other things, it's not the central theme itself..

That key is amazing! would have thought it a photo with trans :) Wow! For the thread surface texture use a bump map - for goodness sake don't model it! :) There are whole collections of tiling cloth bumps out there - they work great. Just set to parametric tile in the mateditor.